Project Sword AKA Epic Citadel

Lazy8s

Veteran
The fully constructed environment and fleshed out characters of a game world using Unreal Engine 3 is on display with Project Sword by Epic for iOS.

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It can be seen in motion within Apple's streaming video of their conference today.
 
And, apologies for posting in two different threads here, but I downloaded and ran Epics "Epic Citadel" demo on the iPhone4, and I haven't been as awed by any graphics demonstration since the Silicon Graphics virtual cave.

Handheld graphics is demonstrably at a point where it can provide a visual experience that is remarkably good. Good enough not only "for handheld use" but for just about anything. I can't help wondering at what point handheld devices will connect to larger screens and start replacing stationary/portable computing and graphics devices outright.

The 3DS connection is - when will Nintendo merge their stationary and their portable graphics products? Or is there greater monetary gain to be had by keeping their product families separate? Personally I can see considerable appeal in mobility. Not only being able to bring your gaming platform to any screen you meet, but being able to play on the go, and then continue playing your game on a bigger screen when available.

Again, apologies, but that demo really made me look at the PC I keep around for pretty much gaming purposes only, and wonder if it really isn't time for the technological dinosaur to finally kick the bucket.
 
And, apologies for posting in two different threads here, but I downloaded and ran Epics "Epic Citadel" demo on the iPhone4, and I haven't been as awed by any graphics demonstration since the Silicon Graphics virtual cave.
I can't help but think you're easily impressed.
 
I'm extremely impressed by the Epic Citadel demo, no doubt the best-looking handheld graphics so far. However, I think the most impressive bit is the amazing texture detail and clarity, which is greatly helped by the extremely high pixel density of the iPhone 4's display. There are a few high contrast edges which could benefit from some AA, but apart from that you can't discern any pixels that would break the illusion. (Well, you can, but you need to be very close, to the point where it becomes uncomfortable for your eyes to focus on the screen.) Quite unlike a normal PC monitors. I'm longing for the day 200+ ppi becomes standard in all new monitors.
 
I spotted the UE3 engine within a millisecond.

And this is a bad thing because?

The UE3 has produced some fantastic looking games and this is easily the most impressive demonstration of the iPhone hardware. Forgetting that though, UE3 titles that use the lightmass GI baking solution (like this) tend to look a lot different to early UE3 games, which admittedly do tend to all have rather similar looking lighting.

Edit: Some pics shamelessly stolen from NeoGAF:



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iPad
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So with licensing costs and the amount of development needed for a game like this, can they do it for something which will sell for less than $10?

More than likely closer to $5 than $10?
 
So with licensing costs and the amount of development needed for a game like this, can they do it for something which will sell for less than $10?

More than likely closer to $5 than $10?

If it allow developers to create a iPhone spin off using the same tools and assets that they used for their $60 console project, why not? Instead of contracting some mobile studio to create an unrelated spin off like they do now, does it not make more sense to just use some of the scrapped content from the main project and turn it into a bite sized spin off to help promote your main game? If it allows the big publishers to reuse their assets they've already created (at a lower LOD, obviously) within a familiar development environment I can see it becoming popular with the big publishers.

Its probably not exactly suited to the smaller indie developers but there's markets for more than one development approach on iOS. Having said that, on the PC side there's quite a few projects that have sprung up since the UDK release so maybe there'll even be interest there from some of the more ambitious indies that want a competitive advantage. I guess a lot depends on how flexible Epic are going to be with licensing.
 
I'm extremely impressed by the Epic Citadel demo, no doubt the best-looking handheld graphics so far. However, I think the most impressive bit is the amazing texture detail and clarity, which is greatly helped by the extremely high pixel density of the iPhone 4's display. There are a few high contrast edges which could benefit from some AA, but apart from that you can't discern any pixels that would break the illusion. (Well, you can, but you need to be very close, to the point where it becomes uncomfortable for your eyes to focus on the screen.) Quite unlike a normal PC monitors. I'm longing for the day 200+ ppi becomes standard in all new monitors.

Frankly,there is nothing really that impressive about their demo beyond professionally done art ( which generally is 80% of success anyway)

I guess you could say that , given extremely shitty fillrate stats on iPads ( or in general on high-res iOs devices) , having it running at decent framerates is kind of impressive in itself.
 
I tried this demo on my 3GS, and it both runs and looks great. It also has some of the best art I've seen in an Unreal Engine game yet, and on the 3GS screen at least it also doesn't look like any other UE3 game out there, though that could partly be due to a lack of DoF and dynamic lighting.

There isn't much to do in this world, but I'll be damned if it isn't the most impressive thing I've seen on my iPhone by a long, looooooooooong mile. It is also the first time that I've seen anything on my 3GS that looks better than a lot of stuff on my PSP, though, again, not much is happening and the proof will be in an actual game.

Of course perhaps I haven't been looking for ... In that case, I'd gladly hear examples of better stuff.

EDIT: and if you're saying that it is not impressive for the hardware, sure, perhaps you're right. Again though, show me the competition! Be the competition if you have to! But otherwise, I think this achievement deserves some recognition.
 
Frankly,there is nothing really that impressive about their demo beyond professionally done art ( which generally is 80% of success anyway)

I don't think anyone said that he's been impressed by the short skirt of the lady that might had been holding the device to showcase it LOL. Personally I'm far more impressed from other devices that present endless stuttering in an antiquity like Quake2:

http://phandroid.com/2010/07/06/thi...processor-in-the-samsung-galaxy-s-is-awesome/

I guess you could say that , given extremely shitty fillrate stats on iPads ( or in general on high-res iOs devices) , having it running at decent framerates is kind of impressive in itself.
He said iPhone4 for a reason; the difference in texture quality between iPhone4 and iPad in the screenshots above is more than an eye-opener.
 
I'm not impressed either. Nice but that's it... Did I look at the wrong video or aren't there any moving object?

As far as portable consoles go, there are some games that simply can't be played on a small screen. I wouldn't imagine playing a WoW raid with my heavy raid UI on less than 20" :)
 
There isn't much to do in this world, but I'll be damned if it isn't the most impressive thing I've seen on my iPhone by a long, looooooooooong mile. It is also the first time that I've seen anything on my 3GS that looks better than a lot of stuff on my PSP, though, again, not much is happening and the proof will be in an actual game.

Well, that was my point. It is indeed an impressive looking demo but,as you said, there is not much going on and the "wow" factor is mostly due to their art.
 
This showcases the PVRTC texturing and the unconditional image qualities provided by a tile buffer among other efficiencies.

After seeing the real-world difference in the frame rate of Android games across multiple hardware, claims of comparable performance by competitors doesn't speak so loudly.
 
He said iPhone4 for a reason; the difference in texture quality between iPhone4 and iPad in the screenshots above is more than an eye-opener.
And then the better image is displayed on a device with twice the ppi. On the iPad: very nice. On the iPhone4: fantastic!

I guess the question is how much they have to scale back the graphics after they add game logic, characters and stuff...

But after seeing this actually running on a phone you can buy (and not just some in-house tech demo/video shown under obscure circumstances or just some impressive but theoretical numbers etc.), just imagine what games could look like on the next iPhone etc., let's say with a 800MHz dual-core Cortex-A9 and a dual-core SGX543 in 32nm/28nm (more RAM would be nice too). Xbox360 graphics on a phone (in practice, not just theoretical) doesn't seem like a pipe dream anymore. Apart from the fact that the game development budget becomes the real problem then. Time for a premium game section in the App Store. App support on the new Apple TV would have been nice too (plus a controller) to drive developer and consumer interest in high-quality non-casual console-like gaming.
 
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Even with a dual-core CPU, that component is still the choking point for actually using the potential of these GPUs for game graphics.

If OpenCL could rebalance the workload even a little for, say, physics (not sure how well that'd go down in a combined OpenGL ES and OpenCL environment), it'd go a long way to keeping both units productive in games.
 
Even with a dual-core CPU, that component is still the choking point for actually using the potential of these GPUs for game graphics.

If OpenCL could rebalance the workload even a little for, say, physics (not sure how well that'd go down in a combined OpenGL ES and OpenCL environment), it'd go a long way to keeping both units productive in games.

Fast pool of low power XDR2 (UMA architecture) + mobile CELL CPU + SGX543MPx = :D.
 
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