It's amazing the difference in video games graphics in the five years between wolfenstein 3d (1992) and quake 2 (1997). I feel like most contemporary video games are only incrementally more graphically detailed since the days of quake 2, all having the same cartoony feel with only slight improvements in movement detail and lighting. In the 90s I was expecting near lifelike detail by 2010, but no.
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Epic's Unreal Engine 3 Ported to iPod Touch and iPhone 3GS
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Have you never played COD Modern Warefare or Crysis? With the fx maxed, the graphics are easily as much an improvement over Quake 2 as Quake 2 was over Wolfenstein.
alll we need now is halo!
True. But in the meantime, NOVA will do.
Get these apps to run on a tablet and we might have something here.
Here is a Quote from the Article:
"At what point does the smartphone become more powerful than an Xbox 360? Sometime in the next 3 - 5 years for sure."
The good news is that the hardware doesn't need to be as powerful (or even more powerful) as an Xbox 360 or PS 3 to deliver the same stunning fx and fps because the consoles have to output 720p while iPhones only have 480x 320 pixels. Thats 6x less pixels to output for the iPhone and the PPI is still VERY high.
"At what point does the smartphone become more powerful than an Xbox 360? Sometime in the next 3 - 5 years for sure."
The good news is that the hardware doesn't need to be as powerful (or even more powerful) as an Xbox 360 or PS 3 to deliver the same stunning fx and fps because the consoles have to output 720p while iPhones only have 480x 320 pixels. Thats 6x less pixels to output for the iPhone and the PPI is still VERY high.
i guess this is cool
but unfortunately, I haven't really been into Unreal Tournament since it went Fragfest. and all strategic gameplay died.
but unfortunately, I haven't really been into Unreal Tournament since it went Fragfest. and all strategic gameplay died.
Yeah I have, and I see what you're saying, but I feel like those graphics are just slightly more complex versions of the cartoony feel that quake 2 had, with slightly more environment interaction.. While quake 2 actually used 3d rendering and had lighting effects whereas wolfenstein did not (and that there was five years between the two, as opposed to twelve or thirteen since q2). And that there were obvious incremental increases in detail from wolfenstein->doom->quake->quake 2 as opposed to most games now being sorta like quake 2 with more processing power. It's probably the case though that I just had a lot more time to concentrate on the minutiae of games ten or fifteen years ago than I do now.
Momentarily, until the new DS and PSP are out (the DS is rumoured to be using the TEGRA chip so yea...).
I'm also wondering what their stance on the Wii is now. They claimed they couldn't port the UE3 to the Wii yet they've gone and ported it for the iPhone? Maybe they've finally done some Valve-quality optimisation.
Crazy stuff, but I haven't been able to deal with playing an FPS on the iPhone. Regardless, cool plus developers can make non-FPS games with it too.
No, no. The future of handgeld gaming, is and will be, on devices that do everything else as well. It's all about convergence. Dedicated devices are on the way out.
alll we need now is halo!
He had Halo, the early versions were developed on a Mac...
Besides even before that we had Marathon, Frog Blast the Vent Core!
Down with Bungie
As a long time fan of the UT series, I’d love to see it on iPhone—but I know this is just the engine, not a game title.
Imagine, though, seeing UT3 on iPhone, when it STILL hasn’t appeared on shelves for Mac despite screenshots that prove its existence.
Others will create gaming add-ons, and Apple officially supports that. (It sure has taken a while though.)
But first-person shooters are NOT the games that need a joystick. A physical d-pad or stick on the left would be nice, but to me aiming is far more important than how I control strafing. And aiming with a joystick is miserable, which is why console shooters give you “training wheels:” a.k.a. auto-aim assistance. No thank you—let me do my own aiming, directly! A mouse offers that. So does a trackball, or a trackpad. And a well-done iPhone shooter aiming mechanism works much like a trackpad.
So—graphics power and screen size aside—I find the iPhone to be superior for first-person-shooters when they’re done right (as is now starting to happen).
Still not AS good as a mouse, but better than a gamepad. (At the same time, a huge screen size IS nice when you’re not on the go, so consoles still have their place, training wheels and all. But give me a 27” iMac and mouse any day.)
Imagine, though, seeing UT3 on iPhone, when it STILL hasn’t appeared on shelves for Mac despite screenshots that prove its existence.
Others will create gaming add-ons, and Apple officially supports that. (It sure has taken a while though.)
But first-person shooters are NOT the games that need a joystick. A physical d-pad or stick on the left would be nice, but to me aiming is far more important than how I control strafing. And aiming with a joystick is miserable, which is why console shooters give you “training wheels:” a.k.a. auto-aim assistance. No thank you—let me do my own aiming, directly! A mouse offers that. So does a trackball, or a trackpad. And a well-done iPhone shooter aiming mechanism works much like a trackpad.
So—graphics power and screen size aside—I find the iPhone to be superior for first-person-shooters when they’re done right (as is now starting to happen).
Still not AS good as a mouse, but better than a gamepad. (At the same time, a huge screen size IS nice when you’re not on the go, so consoles still have their place, training wheels and all. But give me a 27” iMac and mouse any day.)
If you read the linked article you would have seen that Epic plans on bringing Unreal Engine 3 to the entire portable market.
He had Halo, the early versions were developed on a Mac...
Besides even before that we had Marathon, Frog Blast the Vent Core!
Down with Bungie
Marathon FTW.
I have been playing video games now for 25 years. I downloaded a few games for the iPhone a few days ago (while bored waiting to pass Kidney Stones) and have to say some games were fun, many were beautiful but, in the end, I was severely disappointed by most.
I am severely distracted by my own fingers being on the screen blocking my view. I tried playing a few shooter games and this was a serious issue. I watched that demo video and that is a horrible control scheme they have going on. Your hand is on the screen half the time and you are not able to rotate quick enough or adjust aim while moving while firing.
I think for the iPod touch and iPhone to become serious competition for the broader spectrum of gaming, I feel they are a few generations away and need some major tweaks. For specific categories, though, I feel it is a force to be recommended with as it is.
I am severely distracted by my own fingers being on the screen blocking my view. I tried playing a few shooter games and this was a serious issue. I watched that demo video and that is a horrible control scheme they have going on. Your hand is on the screen half the time and you are not able to rotate quick enough or adjust aim while moving while firing.
I think for the iPod touch and iPhone to become serious competition for the broader spectrum of gaming, I feel they are a few generations away and need some major tweaks. For specific categories, though, I feel it is a force to be recommended with as it is.
alll we need now is halo!
Halo sucked ass. I'm sorry but halo is only good to the degree that it is shoved up its own rear.
i liked the controls to NOVA, the combined fire and turn control worked much better than the other FPS controls i've played. With a bit more refining these games could be more playable .., just in time for this engine
Yeah I have, and I see what you're saying, but I feel like those graphics are just slightly more complex versions of the cartoony feel that quake 2 had, with slightly more environment interaction.. While quake 2 actually used 3d rendering and had lighting effects whereas wolfenstein did not (and that there was five years between the two, as opposed to twelve or thirteen since q2). And that there were obvious incremental increases in detail from wolfenstein->doom->quake->quake 2 as opposed to most games now being sorta like quake 2 with more processing power. It's probably the case though that I just had a lot more time to concentrate on the minutiae of games ten or fifteen years ago than I do now.
Wow. What are you playing games on? Modern Warfare 2 is so far out of Quake 2's league.. like, many many many light years ahead of Quake 2.
All you need to do is look at a couple of levels in Modern Warfare 2. Look at "Of Their Own Accord", "Cliffhanger", "The Gulag". The gameplay in those levels (and the entire game) can't even begin to be compared to the gameplay in Quake 2. And the amount of detail? Walk out of the bunker in "Of Their Own Accord", follow the trail, get to the top, turn right. Even though its not as pretty as Crysis, that amount of detail and on screen activity would have been unfathomable in the Quake 2 days. Theres a lot of other things in Modern Warfare 2 that the game doesn't get enough credit for. Fine details, like the way the chain link fence rattles in the "Team Player" level, or, on the PC and Xbox360 version, the way the lighting reflects off your gun and the way the lighting works in night vision.
Look at Grand Theft Auto 4 too. In the late 90s, it was a top down game with characters made of a few pixels that ran at a very low frame-rate. Now it's a fully realized, living, breathing 3D world where every single pixel in that world is lit by a pixel shader, not a generic light like Quake 2.
If you want to actually talk about a game that is like a Quake 2 era game, look at UT3. But saying its the same with more processing power is a gross mis-understatement. UT3, and all Unreal Engine 3 based games, have insanely high resolution textures. A single character in Gears of War 2 and UT3 will have a higher polygon count and higher resolution textures than the most complex entire screen in Quake 2. Plus, except for the PS3 version of UT3, those GoW and UT3 characters are fully and properly lit and shaded and bump mapped. Unlike the gouraud shading used in the late 90s.
Another perfect example is Half-Life 2. It's 5 years old now. But compare it to the original Half-Life. As long as you're running it on DirectX 9 hardware, theres no comparison. Pixel shaders, single character polygon counts and textures that best the most complex scenes in the original game. When it comes to gameplay, its no longer jumping puzzles with a good story. It's very heavily physics based with an even better story.
Look at the PC version of Doom 3 too. It doesn't play anything like the first Doom or Quake games. It's 5 years old now too, but it still sets the standard for lighting effects that even modern games are judged against. At it's highest settings, it REQUIRES 512MB of RAM. Thats not taking into account whatever resolution and anti-aliasing settings you're using. Thats just for the texture set.
So games have come a long long way in the last several years. They're much more than just Quake with more processing. The types of games we have now and have had since 2004 just wouldn't be possible in the 90s, due to both graphics and gameplay provided by the new graphics power.
Why should UT3 be brought out on the Mac? I know Epic said it would be. But whats the point? Up until last year, the vast majority of Macs were sold with Intel GPUs that couldn't play a modern game if its life depended on it. Since then, the vast majority of Macs have been sold with a low-end GPU that gets outperformed several times over by a $200 game console (Xbox360 Arcade). The potential market for any games on the Mac is extremely small, considering Macs with passable (not even close to high end) GPUs run close to $2,000, and even those GPUs (the mid-range ones, like the ATI 46xx series, 9600M) still get outperformed by that $200 console. The only Mac with any power to run the game as it was meant to be played, at high settings, is the Mac Pro. And that sells so little and to such a niche crowd because of the high price, that it doesn't make sense for ANY game developer to bring high end games to the platform.
You can turn off the aiming assists in modern console games.
And honestly, those iPhone games that rely on finger aiming are entirely inaccurate. You have a big clumsy finger and a game that doesn't know where to accurately point and shoot. Aiming with an Xbox360 controller is far more accurate and enjoyable.
And honestly, playing a FPS on a touchpad is one of the worst experiences I've ever had playing a FPS, even worse than the FPS of the SNES days. Having to continuously move your finger around and re-arrange it is just annoying and inaccurate.
So you're championing touch aiming on a platform that has proven to have inaccurate controls AND a computer that includes a GPU that can't even push games at native resolution at playable frame-rates over consoles with better controls than the iPhone and better frame-rates and detail than the same computer?
As impressive as it is for being on the iPhone, it's a very cleverly written headline.
Yes, it's Unreal Engine 3 ... but it's not the full thing. It'll enable the 3GS to do some wonderful games, far beyond anything seen so far, but you're not going to see Gears of War 2 on the iPhone running identically to the Xbox 360 version.
So Unreal Engine 3? Yes.
Consider adding "Mobile Edition" after the title? Definitely.
Yes, it's Unreal Engine 3 ... but it's not the full thing. It'll enable the 3GS to do some wonderful games, far beyond anything seen so far, but you're not going to see Gears of War 2 on the iPhone running identically to the Xbox 360 version.
So Unreal Engine 3? Yes.
Consider adding "Mobile Edition" after the title? Definitely.
thank you i have a sweet idea for one which apple could do - have it plug into the charger bit and it clips onto the iphone/ipod, joystick on left side (power button) and buttons for shooting/accelerating or whatever would be sweet
thank you i have a sweet idea for one which apple could do - have it plug into the charger bit and it clips onto the iphone/ipod, joystick on left side (power button) and buttons for shooting/accelerating or whatever would be sweet
But these devices are. The PSP has video, MP3 playback, web browser support, GPS and webcam accessories. The next one will probably have the GPS+cam built in.
The new DS has camera, built in web browser etc too.
The next generation of both these devices will also continue to add more features. FWIW the best games are also on the DS and PSP, whilst the iPod and iPhone are great devices the games just aren't as good as what you get on (semi)dedicated devices.
I agree. The screen just isn't big enough to do everything on-screen like that and your fingers end up obscuring too much. I've tried some other FPS games on the iPhone and it leaves me unimpressed. Graphically it's amazing to see something that complex playing out on a device that small, but control-wise it's a bust.
What might be interesting is if Apple made the black frame area of the iPhone touch-sensitive and allowed game developers to use that region for controls. I could see that working well, at the very least to get your fingers mostly out of the way, but I'm not sure if it's technically feasible.