Michal Ždanský If you followed Wednesday's streamed Apple Event with me (or downloaded it as a podcast today), you certainly didn't miss the presentation of Epic Games, which was given by its president Mike Capps himself. Together with the game designer, they presented an upcoming game with the code name Project Sword, which will run on a modified Unreal Engine 3.
Many successful titles run on it, namely Unreal Tournament 3, Batman: Arkham Asylum, or both parts of Mass Effect. Now we may soon be waiting for similar graphic delicacies on the screens of our iOS devices.
If you remember John Carmack's recent presence where he demonstrated a tech demo of the upcoming iPhone 4 game Rage and were as amazed as I was, then what EPic Games has prepared will take your breath away.
Not long after the end of the Apple Event, a free game called Epic Citadel appeared in the App Store, which is exactly the demo presented by Project Sword, that is, the part where you walk around the citadel and its surrounding area. Do not expect knightly duels.
The main purpose of this demo is to show the graphical capabilities of that Unreal engine on the iPhone 3GS/4. I didn't hesitate and downloaded Epic Citadel, and even now, as I write this article, I'm still in awe. I would have to use countless superlatives to express how impressed I was by the graphics of this game. All details are elaborated down to the last pixel, especially on the iPhone 4, it is a truly incredible spectacle. Until at times you almost forget that you are holding "just" a phone in your hand.
Movement around this vast 3D world is done in the same way as in most FPS games, with two virtual sticks, only you don't use the other one to shoot, but only to turn. An alternative way is to tap on a specific place, where your character will go by itself, while you shoot with your finger strokes.
In addition, everything is accompanied by pleasant atmospheric music and noises from the surroundings, which will enhance your experience even more. Moreover, to my surprise, everything is very smooth, at least on the latest iPhone model. 3GS owners may need to disable a few background apps, but their device should still be able to handle the game.
As I mentioned before, the space you can walk through is quite large, considering that this entire project was created in about 8 weeks (according to Epic Games). You move along the walls of the citadel, visit the mysterious cathedral or walk along the path leading down to the river along the fairground tents.
Despite all these words, the attached pictures and video will tell you many times more, so enjoy yourself and slowly look forward to the arrival of games in a similar graphic jacket.
Gallery
iTunes link - Free
The iPad version looks nice too. It works on 3gs without any problems, but it's probably not such a strange thing :-) I don't have IP4 then :-)
I came here today to buy an iPhone 2 from O4...if you can steal it there..:) I'm curious..
so OpenGL probably won't be completely "dead", right Mr. Honza (from the article about AutoCAD)
And what does it have to do with opengl? I didn't look at what kind of accelerator the iphone has, but I would expect some type of hwtl with a fixed function pipeline, the wii needs something similar.
What you would expect is Unauthoritative. 3Gcko reports when trying to install that my device does not have opengl 2.0 es. So it can be assumed that newer versions already have it, right? ;)
Well, you are only about 4 revisions behind, which is exactly what we were talking about glsl is already in revision 4.2, with the fact that drivers for ati are only needed for 2.0. In other words, nobody implements the new things, which is the same as dying.
It's a shame that you can't use the gyroscope on the iPhone 4 to look around, it would be a level higher, you need to be able to turn it on and use it somehow in the final version :)
It works fine for me on ip4. But it's definitely not without a hitch. The controls are crazy and practically unusable for me. As a technology demo, it's very nice.