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Unreal Engine 3-powered Epic Citadel now playable in browsers

Danny Cowan — Thu, 02 May 2013 20:15:00 EST

Epic Games has released an HTML5 version of its Unreal Engine tech demo Epic Citadel. Currently, the project is optimized for Firefox Nightly version 23 or above, so make sure your browser is up to spec before you check it out.

Collaborating with an engineering team at Mozilla, Epic developed a web-capable port of Unreal Engine 3 in just four days. A combination of the JavaScript subset asm.js and Emscripten drove the port's creation, and the result should be playable in any standards-based browser that implements HTML5, WebGL and JavaScript.

While Epic Citadel currently crashes in Chrome, Google's developers are looking into a fix. Internet Explorer does not support current versions of WebGL. Epic Citadel launched as a free download for iOS devices back in 2010, paving the way for Chair's release of the hit Unreal-powered action game Infinity Blade later that year.

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Unreal Engine 3-powered Epic Citadel now playable in browsers originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 02 May 2013 20:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Epic Citadel runs faster, maps bumpier in Clovertrail+ demo

Jessica Conditt — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 12:45:00 EST

Epic Games hasn't abandoned Epic Citadel for Android phones, today demonstrating the engine running on Intel's new dual-core Atom Processor Z2580 chip, part of a series codenamed Clovertrail+.

In the above demo video, Epic Citadel tops out at 61 frames per second. The demo shows off Epic Citadel's ability to handle realistic reflections, bump mapping and all manner of aerial camera zooms on a mobile device. Intel showed off the Clovertrail+ chips running Epic Citadel at the Mobile World Congress 2013 in Barcelona.

Epic Citadel runs faster, maps bumpier in Clovertrail+ demo originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 25 Feb 2013 12:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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'Epic Citadel' tech demo now on Android

Jordan Mallory — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 23:00:00 EST

Android users still can't partake in the acclaimed slashing hijinks of Epic Games' mobile showpiece Infinity Blade or its sequel, but they can walk around its medieval setting and watch things, like, render and stuff, now that Epic Citadel is available for free on Google Play and the Amazon Appstore.

Originally released on iOS way back in the stone ages (read: September 2010), Epic Citadel serves as both Unreal Engine 3 tech demo and phone hardware benchmarking tool, allowing Android users to not only see how pretty UE3's rivers are, but also how well their devices handle rendering them. Our Galaxy Nexus, for instance, ranked in at the "High Performance" level, churning out an average of 43.9 FPS at 1196 x 720. During testing, framerates peaked just below 60 FPS and momentarily bottomed out around 18 FPS.

As with the iOS release, there isn't a tremendous amount to actually do in Epic Citadel, aside from looking at fluttery banners and lens flares, and its on-screen twinstick controls are only recommended for those who enjoy being 100 percent out of control of their movement. Still, it's very pretty.

Gallery: Epic Citadel (Android)

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'Epic Citadel' tech demo now on Android originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 29 Jan 2013 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Unreal Engine 3 now on Windows 8 and Windows RT

Richard Mitchell — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 11:00:00 EST

If you still have the capacity to be surprised by learning that Unreal Engine 3 now runs on a new thing, prepare to be surprised. Unreal Engine 3 now runs on both Windows 8 and Windows RT, Epic has announced. It's not exactly shocking that Epic's workhorse engine is on Windows 8, though the news is certainly good for anyone looking at the upcoming line of Windows RT tablets.

Epic showcased the engine running on just such a tablet, the Asus Vivo Tab RT, which you can see in the video above. The demo in question is "Epic Citadel," which was first used to showcase UE3 on the iPhone back in 2010. Epic VP Mark Rein noted that this is the full Unreal Engine 3, using the "full DirectX 9 pipeline, with shaders and materials," and not a "modified mobile version"

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Unreal Engine 3 now on Windows 8 and Windows RT originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 29 Aug 2012 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Unreal dev kit adding iOS support, Epic Citadel downloaded 1 million times

Christopher Grant — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 12:30:00 EST

Filed under: Weird But True, Opinions, New In Pop Culture

Well, that didn't take long. Less than a week after Apple announced that it would "relax" some of its iOS restrictions, allowing the use of third-party app creation tools, among other things, comes the following announcement from Epic Games, straight out of the Korea Games Conference: "We announced UDK will be able to generate iOS applications!"

To translate for you quickly: Independent iPhone developers will soon be able to use the freely available Unreal Development Kit - which Epic also announced has 350,000 installations to its name - to create graphically lush mobile apps. If you're looking for an example of that graphical potential, check out the Epic Citadel tech demo, first revealed at this month's Apple press conference. With over one million downloads (another figure shared today!), we wouldn't be surprised if you already have.

But you probably haven't seen Dungeon Defenders, a title whose developer has taken the jump from UDK novice to Unreal Engine 3 licensee, and all the commercial benefits that entails. You can see a video of the game running on both the iPhone and Android platforms after the break, but it's also in development for Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network.

We're pretty excited to see the strength of Unreal Engine married to the diversity and quantity of the new breed of mobile gaming marketplaces, iOS and Android included.

Gallery: Epic Citadel ('Project Sword' tech demo)

Continue reading Unreal dev kit adding iOS support, Epic Citadel downloaded 1 million times

Unreal dev kit adding iOS support, Epic Citadel downloaded 1 million times originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 14 Sep 2010 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Epic talks Project Sword, Unreal Engine on iPhone, and Apple TV as a game console

JC Fletcher — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:30:00 EST

Filed under: News, In The News, Weird But True, Opinions, New In Pop Culture

Following yesterday's dramatic announcement of Project Sword for iOS -- and the dramatic release of the free Epic Citadel tech demo -- Gamasutra spoke to Epic's Mike Capps about the games and the platform. Capps said that putting Unreal Engine 3 content on iPhone wasn't as hard as it seemed, thanks to the device's storage space that can come in handy for textures. "You've got 16 gigs of flash memory, which is way better, faster memory than what most people have generally on a home PC," he said. "So that stuff works really well. It's the big environments that get really complicated on the rendering tools for iPhone. But yeah, we've got some tricks for it."

Capps has his eyes on the future of the platform, both for Epic's own games and licensees. "We've got a few of our licensees using [the iOS tools for UE3] now, who've been testing it with us. So we'll roll it out to existing licensees and then start opening up. I think [Epic VP] Mark Rein has a big plan for how they're going to roll it out and make sure everybody's using it."

Capps also thinks there's potential to turn the new Apple TV into a game console of sorts. "... I can't wait to throw our engineers at it and see if we can get the latency we need to be able to play a game interactively over that wireless link to the Apple TV," he said. "I sure hope so."

Gallery: Epic Citadel ('Project Sword' tech demo)

Epic talks Project Sword, Unreal Engine on iPhone, and Apple TV as a game console originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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