Epic Games has released the UDK with iOS support. While this may not mean much to gamers, yet, it is a huge step for developers looking to create the next Gears of War or Infinity Blade for the iPhone, as they now have access to the very same toolset used by Epic.
UDK’s iOS development feature set includes:
-The full source and content for “Epic Citadel,” plus an additional castle demo map
-Support for major Unreal Engine 3 desktop features, including the award-winning Unreal Editor and its fully integrated suite of tools including Unreal Kismet, Unreal Cascade and Unreal Matinee
-Superior rendering systems, including Unreal Lightmass global illumination supported by Unreal Swarm distributed computing
-Content streaming functionality: Build huge, seamless environments
-Advanced lighting and shadowing such as per-pixel lighting and real-time shadows
-Console-quality capabilities: Make games with animations, particle effects and player collision
-Full Unreal Kismet visual scripting functionality: Create games without having to modify program code
-Convenient mobile previewer makes it possible to emulate games at native resolution for quick iteration
-UDK Remote enables iOS devices to serve as wireless controllers with full touch and tilt functionality for testing games on the computer
-New Unreal Frontend system compiles scripts and deploys builds for multiple platforms with the simple click of a button
“With the tremendous success of Infinity Blade, we couldn’t be happier to put our free tools into the hands of iOS developers all over the world,” said Mark Rein, vice president of Epic Games. “We’ve proven what Unreal Engine 3 can accomplish on mobile, and we’re ready to usher in a new wave of amazing handheld games and applications.”
As the Unreal engine has fueled countless third party PC and console games for the past several years, it will be interesting to see the spike (we hope) in quality 3D games popping up throughout 2011 and beyond.
