Unreal Engine, Now For Arm/powervr?

[cappuchok]

Seems Epic has ported the Unreal Engine for use on the iPhone down to 3GS, and I can only say it is truly amazing. Go download it on iTunes and check it out. It really shows off what is possible with the ARM/PowerVR combo. I don't expect this will amount to much for the Pandora, seeing as the Unreal Engine isn't open source (yet?), but the fact that it has been ported and even runs smoothly on this hardware is noteworthy.

Quick look for those without iDevices

 

[Blue Ion]

Basically, we need an apple os emulator for Android, and most importantly, for linux.
Then again, the 3GS hardware is somewhat more powerful than the pandora's, at least in terms of the graphics chip, and since iphone 3GS< Ipad < iphone 4, it is going to be uphill from there.

 

[Jumpman]

Yeah, I downloaded the demo a few days ago. It is way sick, the details are just crazy. Very cool tech demo!

Chris

 

[Blue Ion]

I don't own any apple branded device to try it out, but Epic really felt the pinch from id's Rage demo. I'd like to see, though, if those two games are going to turn into full blown psp/ds like games or are just going to be more minigames collections with quite some bling.

As much as I hate all things apple, the hardware inside the latest iDevices is really strong, it was a shame no one was putting it to good use. Too bad our pandora is going to struggle in a similar way, with lack of dedicated and optimised engines, but considering the amount of talented coders around here, one mustn't lose hope.

 

[wermy]

Basically, we need an apple os emulator for Android, and most importantly, for linux.
Then again, the 3GS hardware is somewhat more powerful than the pandora's, at least in terms of the graphics chip, and since iphone 3GS< Ipad < iphone 4, it is going to be uphill from there.

Just a quick note (and anyone feel free to correct me), but I would think that since the iPad's CPU is 25% faster than the iPhone 4's, even though the iPhone 4 has twice the memory, the iPad would do better in applications like this, no? Not that it's really important or even on-topic to the thread...

It would be AMAZING if we had it running in some capacity on the Pandora, but until pigs start flying and they release the source, I just don't see it happening. :-\

 

[Hooka]

as someone who has written a multiplayer mod in unreal, I shudder at this prospect... it's not something I would want on the pandora or any other handheld... epic is classic for having a very nice looking and artist friendly engine, but when it comes down to it, it eats babies when it comes to coding for it and you never get full source access or even documentation that explains the interaction between the scripting system and the real c++ backend. Heck, even the scripting documents are horrendous... I know, I know "but it is t3h 1337 engine of aw350m3n355 blah blah blah", just because it looks pretty doesn't mean it's efficient, useful or fun to work with. Level design and importing of assets is fairly nice, but even so I got bitched at all through a project because I was the scripter and I could do anything! blah! blah! If you want to build off of unreal's base you have to jump through hoops and modify/create a significant amount of scripts just to get something simple accomplished... nevermind the functions that were removed and don't work but are still mentioned everywhere...

Sorry, I'll stop my epic rant about epics piece of crap...

*edited due to a crappy P button on this keyboard, I'm gonna have to find another...

 

[Blue Ion]

Yeah, I kinda forgot about the cpu speed. Apple, and many smartphone makers, underclock the cpu to save battery but keep in mind that the iphone 4 has a smaller screen, and more memory (though that may not help all that much) so perhaps both things get offset each other (faster cpu vs smaller screen).
The screen size is important because the 3gs is shown running the game fairly well, but the Pandora has almost twice the screen size, which means it will struggle even more.

 

[wermy]

Yeah, I kinda forgot about the cpu speed. Apple, and many smartphone makers, underclock the cpu to save battery but keep in mind that the iphone 4 has a smaller screen, and more memory (though that may not help all that much) so perhaps both things get offset each other (faster cpu vs smaller screen).
The screen size is important because the 3gs is shown running the game fairly well, but the Pandora has almost twice the screen size, which means it will struggle even more.

Right, and the screen resolution of the 3GS is the only reason it can run the game well at all (480x320). The iPhone 4's resolution is 960x640, which is pretty close to the iPad's 1024x768 resolution screen (even though the actual size of the screen is small in comparison). Again it's pretty nit-picky and off-topic, but I still think the iPad could run it better than the iPhone 4, even though their resolutions are similar. I'll compare the two this evening just out of curiosity.

Edit: edited for clarity

 

[traylorpark]

Right, and the screen resolution of the 3GS is the only reason it can run the game well at all (480x320). The iPhone 4's resolution is 960x640, which is pretty close to the iPad's 1024x768 resolution screen (even though the actual size of the screen is small in comparison). Again it's pretty nit-picky and off-topic, but I still think the iPad could run it better than the iPhone 4, even though their resolutions are similar. I'll compare the two this evening just out of curiosity.

Now that's interesting, I never even considered how screen resolution would allow this engine to run on a 3GS.

As an artist I'm torn with regards to this engine. I never, ever ever ever am interested in making art for an engine like this. To make a good looking game of any decent scale in the Unreal Engine requires lots and lots of artist's time, and probably many artists. The budget required for making a large iPhone game just lept over the budget for making a Wii game. The unreal engine is really only good at making games with a plastic like realism that is quickly dated. I'm not a fan of realism.

 

[Exophase]

It looks great, although the framerate seems just slightly on the choppy side at times - could be Youtube hurting things, so I should probably reserve judgment.

One thing about this demo is that it's all very static content, ie backgrounds with some animations here and there and nothing else. This does a good job showcasing the 3D hardware capabilities but doesn't say a lot for CPU involvement. People talk about this level of quality nipping at the heels of PS3 and XBox360, and the general computational capabilities of the iOS platforms is just going to be far less. But it'll be good to see how much the Cortex-A8 + NEON platforms are indeed up to the task.

 

[Jumpman]

It looks great, although the framerate seems just slightly on the choppy side at times - could be Youtube hurting things, so I should probably reserve judgment.

One thing about this demo is that it's all very static content, ie backgrounds with some animations here and there and nothing else. This does a good job showcasing the 3D hardware capabilities but doesn't say a lot for CPU involvement. People talk about this level of quality nipping at the heels of PS3 and XBox360, and the general computational capabilities of the iOS platforms is just going to be far less. But it'll be good to see how much the Cortex-A8 + NEON platforms are indeed up to the task.

Yeah, I'm running a 3rd gen 32gb ipod touch, and it was choppy very rarely. It ran very good 98% of the time, with a few moments of stutter here and there. There really isn't a lot going on, so let's see this with some NPC and some weapons being fired and then let's talk. For what it's doing though, it looks damn fine and runs smoothly on my unit.

Chris

 

[milkshake]

Basically, we need an apple os emulator for Android, and most importantly, for linux.
Then again, the 3GS hardware is somewhat more powerful than the pandora's, at least in terms of the graphics chip, and since iphone 3GS< Ipad < iphone 4, it is going to be uphill from there.

Since when was the 3GS more powerfull than the pandora? I thought it was the same chipset?

 

[Blue Ion]

Since when was the 3GS more powerfull than the pandora? I thought it was the same chipset?

Not the same SoC.
The pandoras Soc is the OMAP3530 from Texas Instruments. The 3gs one is using one from Samsung, and while it uses the same cpu (or perhaps faster as I think it was rated at 800 mhz), it uses a stronger variant of the sgx. Our is the 530, and the iphone is the 535, which is strong enough to be even used in netbooks (those with the intel gma 500 gpu).

On the downside, Samsung's SoC don't have any type of dsp, so that is a advantage for us, but until we get allowed to use ours, I guess it is of now use for now.

 

[gp32rich]

It would be AMAZING if we had it running in some capacity on the Pandora, but until pigs start flying and they release the source, I just don't see it happening. :-

Would that be before or after DN4 gets released? ... http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/56472-hail-to-the-king-baby/

 

[cappuchok]

The 3gs one is using one from Samsung, and while it uses the same cpu (or perhaps faster as I think it was rated at 800 mhz)

It was officially rated at 833 MHz but is underclocked to 600 MHz.

 

[fusion_power]

:blink:

I want this on the Pandora -NOW!

Well, I'm sure the Pandora could also handle this, maybe not in full 800x400 res and maybe not full Details like in the iPhone Demo but if it is optimized I guess there can be squeezed out alot of the Pandora Hardware. Maybe not with the curent Kernel/Driver limitations but it shouldn't hurt to try it. Now, the EPIC guys just need a Pandora.

as someone who has written a multiplayer mod in unreal, I shudder at this prospect... it's not something I would want on the pandora or any other handheld... epic is classic for having a very nice looking and artist friendly engine, but when it comes down to it, it eats babies when it comes to coding for it and you never get full source access or even documentation that explains the interaction between the scripting system and the real c++ backend. Heck, even the scripting documents are horrendous... I know, I know "but it is t3h 1337 engine of aw350m3n355 blah blah blah", just because it looks pretty doesn't mean it's efficient, useful or fun to work with. Level design and importing of assets is fairly nice, but even so I got bitched at all through a project because I was the scripter and I could do anything! blah! blah! If you want to build off of unreal's base you have to jump through hoops and modify/create a significant amount of scripts just to get something simple accomplished... nevermind the functions that were removed and don't work but are still mentioned everywhere...

People say, the Unreal-Editor is easy to use... uh, at least the People from EPIC say this...
I tried the Editor when Unreal 1 came out. I was able to use it even it is some strange "cut out holes from an huge invisible solid mass" brush-editing...
Later, the Editor was to complex for me and they moved to these Prefab-stuff so you actualy needed external programs to make Level Decorations instead of just building everything in the Editor itself, VERY annoying.
The only Game Editor I really used much was the BUILD Editor from Duke 3D. After some training simple to use but everything was included sou you were able to make nice levels, no stupid Scripting, no external modeling. Just straight Level-building, this is what I want.