Reining on Google’s parade

One of the advantages of Google’s Android platform is also the very same thing keeping the iPhone’s showpiece, Infinity Blade, off the Android Store. Mark Rein and Tim Sweeney, co-founders of Epic Games spoke with Gizmondo (via Gamesindustry.biz) about how Google need to make sure Android developers produce consistent results for their handhelds instead of the current hands-off approach because it’s lead to some fragmentation. The handsets that Android appears on differ in specs meaning the experience for the user simply isn’t consistent which is one of the factors Epic isn’t happy with.

“If you took the underlying NGP hardware and shipped Android on it, you’d find far far less performance on Android. Let’s say you took an NGP phone and made four versions of it. Each one would give you a different amount of memory and performance based on the crap [networks] put on their phone,” said Rein adding “Google needs to be a little more evil. They need to be far more controlling.” I’ve been called an Apple fanboy but my reasons for sticking with their devices stem from what Rein is saying. Buying an Apple product I know what I’m getting and the variations differ on a dramatically reduced scale compared to their competitors. But they’re not free from market fragmenting, with owners of the iPhone 3G unable to play some of the newer games found on the App Store.

The draw of Android is a hard one to neglect however with more and more handsets coming out with dazzling CPUs and impressive functionalities. Google do appear to be addressing the problem of quality on their operating system with the latest version, Honeycomb, only available on tablets for the moment while they figure out how to develop a standard for all others to follow. And Epic aren’t against the platform as a whole since they have made a version of Unreal Engine 3 for Android but even that comes with a few annoyances. Dungeon Defenders and Monster Madness are two games powered by UE3 sitting happily on Google’ marketplace for a number of months. However in the case of Dungeon Defenders, the game is larger than the 50MB limit Google imposes meaning the developer has to host it separately resulting in an additional bandwidth costs for them on top of paying to appear on the Android App Store. Infinity Blade is almost 1GB worth of data so imagine if millions of people suddenly tried to download it all at once.

As Rein points out to GI.biz, this only shows how young Android is and not whether it’s inferior to Apple. Comparisons can be drawn to the Xbox Live Marketplace and its original capping of games’ sizes. In the early days it too only allowed 50MB games because they had to fit on memory cards for those who didn’t own hard drives. Nowadays with that problem almost extinct, XBLA titles can be ten or twenty times that size. It’ll take time for Google to get it ‘right’ for their service but the differing handsets could still pose a problem for them. The standardisation they implement could see a number of lower spec ones to suddenly be obsolete or hinder the potential of superior machines. One thing is for sure, they’ll figure it out.

The 3DS is unreal

In an interview with Gamespot, Fabrice Cuny of Ubisoft answered questions on one of the publisher’s launch titles for the 3DS, Splinter Cell 3D and among the usual banter came the shock revelation that despite earlier reports, the 3DS is capable of running the Unreal Engine 3.

Mark Rein from Epic Games, makers of Unreal, came out a while back and said Nintendo’s new handheld just isn’t powerful enough for the engine sparking a frenzy of trash talk from gamers who were stunned at how a brand new system could be weaker than two year old mobile phones. For whatever reason, Ubisoft have managed to get the epitome of game engines working with Cuny downplaying reports that the 3DS is equivalent to a Wii in terms of processing power: “The 3DS is powerful, and we are able to run the Unreal engine on this console, which is pretty impressive for a handheld machine, and the 3D doesn’t affect the performance (thanks to my amazing programmers). The architecture is different compared to a Wii or some other platforms that we had to work with here at Ubisoft Montreal.”

From what I’ve seen of the 3DS, the platform is capable of some wonderful things. It’s unfair to judge a system’s overall power on its launch title but even games like Super Street Fighter 3D looks impressive and it can only get better from here. Just how well the Unreal Engine does run and if the textures and polygonal count suffer when ported down to the 3DS is unclear but Cuny sounded reassuringly pleased with the performance. The engine itself has been used for all manner of games some more clever at hiding the fact then others. It’s not just cover-based shooters but platformers and fighters who are powered by Unreal so the fact Ubisoft claim they can get it working and working well is good news indeed. Whether they decide to share just how their coders got it working however is a different story altogether.

The PS3’s massive effect on an RPG

After a year of listening to Xbox 360 gamers gush over how good Mass Effect 2 is, PS3 owners will be able to taste that sweet slice of RPG pie. Acting as the cherry on top is how Sony’s version will be running on the Mass Effect 3 engine, alluding to the idea of it looking better than its two counterparts. With the demo (so close to release it’s a good representation of the final game) available via PSN, Digital Foundry compared both Xbox 360 and PS3 with a few surprising results. It turns out that change isn’t always for the better thanks to how the game’s Unreal Engine 3 runs on the PS3. There’s not anti-aliasing to speak of on the PlayStation but still manages to look similar to the 360’s efforts and the resolution has clearly been improved on Sony’s big black box, though not the normal-mapping. That appears to be missing altogether. And throughout the demo, some effects have had their resolution dropped adding more artifacts to otherwise smooth graphics. The Foundry used the scene where the curvy Miranda talks to the Illusive Man as an example noting a smidge more blockiness to the backdrop.

Where frame rate is concerned, the 360 is locked at 20FPS and in easier situations to render, can creep above that meaning when the system has a lot to deal with, the very top can suffer from a bit of screen tearing but other than that, its free from having the visuals torn in such a way. For some reason, the PS3 version has no frame-rate locking but does have a default of 30FPS. This however means more screen tearing in both cut-scenes and in-game action which can be really quite annoying. The full comparison goes into a lot more detail and worth a read for anyone interested in how the two platforms handle one of the best games of 2010. The bottom line in this case is that Mass Effect 2 looks brilliant on both Xbox 360 and PS3. One may have a better resolution and the other can run the game without having its screen pulled in two but its all just swings and roundabouts. Running the PS3 version on thew new Mass Effect 3 engine with the few glitches it has, doesn’t mean there’s anything to fear about the quality of the third game either. Eleven months are still to pass before it is even out which is a hell of a long time to iron out any issues of this kind.

Project Sword in glorious motion

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Jaws officially dropped at Apple’s recent press conference when Epic Games unveiled Project Sword for the iPhone, a game powered by the Unreal Engine 3 and developed by Chair. Now that you’ve just managed to lock your jaw back into place, be prepared to have it fall once again after watching the game in action. It is gorgeous. Not only does it look good but it moves well too with the first section of the demo gliding through the street of a medieval town, all controlled by the user. And to show off even more, Epic have released an early tech demo of the street navigation called Epic Citadel on iTunes so you can see how the iPhone and or iPad handles Unreal Engine 3 yourselves. How very kind. Epic Citadel took only eight weeks to develop and features such Unreal Engine 3 tech as Global Illumination and Texture Bending.

Project Sword is still in development but its release is only a few months away (around Christmas) and so far shatters most other handhelds in terms of in-engine graphics.  First Rage and now Unreal Engine 3? On an iPhone? What a world we live in!