Epic Games Shows Off What The Unreal Engine Can Do For iOS Gaming With Epic Citadel
September 1, 2010
Epic Games has entered the App Store and with a very interesting app. Epic Citadel is a tech-demo style app that shows off the power of the Unreal Engine 3 on iDevices. No, it isn't a game. It's an interactive demo where you walk through a stunning visual environment.
Does the name Epic Games ring a bell? The company is known for creating hit gaming console titles like Gears of War 2, Shadow Complex, and the upcoming Gears of War 3. There are other games like Mass Effect 2 and Borderlands utilizing the Unreal Engine 3.
Epic Citadel sounds like it began as just an experiment. It took a small team of Epic’s programmers, artists and testers only two months to create. From my perspective, it does seem like a good test to find out what level of gaming and what effort it could take to port full console games, with full HD quality, to the iOS platform.
Epic Citadel features:
Unreal Engine 3 for mobile gaming platforms is scalable yet packed with the same tools hundreds of thousands of users work with to create games, simulations and animated content. • Amazing visuals. “Epic Citadel” pushes the envelope for stunning visuals on iOS devices. Through the latest advances in Unreal Engine 3 technology, the application delivers unrivaled graphics and special effects that immerse players in the kingdom’s grounds. • Bump offset mapping. Also known as parallax mapping or relief mapping, bump offset mapping enhances the visual appearance of stone walls and rocks providing intricate textures. • Normal mapped architecture. Brings stunning detail to bricks and ground surfaces within the environment. • Texture blending with painted weight maps. Refines nuances on roads and terrain, making them rich and lifelike. • Global illumination. Unreal Engine 3’s built-in global illumination system, Unreal Lightmass, provides realistic lighting and shadows with minimal development resources. • Dynamic specular lighting with texture masks. Helps create authentic cobblestone roads and vivid reflective marble surfaces, while lens flares and light coronas add dramatic emphasis when panning across light sources. • Real-time reflections and animation. Environment mapping enables real-time reflections on objects such as the statue inside the cathedral. Dynamic movements of trees and banners are made possible through the use of vertex deformation and skeletal animation. • Free tools. Epic’s Unreal Development Kit (UDK), available for free download at www.udk.com/download, ships with the same tools and technologies used to create “Epic Citadel.” Anyone can create games with UDK.Epic Citadel is compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPod touch (3rd generation), and iPad running iOS 3.1 or later, and is available in the App Store now completely free. [gallery link="file" columns="4"]