Tech Report: A Look At Epic Citadel

With the impressive specs of the recent iPhone 4, along with the iPad and iPhone 3GS, we always new that Apple’s stylish little handhelds had tantalizing potential that seemed destined to be unlocked at some point. The question was whether or not the system’s slightly limiting development environment, in combination with the high development costs in creating graphically fully featured releases would prevent such a thing from ever happening. With Epic Games’ Epic Citadel Demo a glimpse of that potential has been realised, finally showcasing just what the iPhone range of Power VR SGX GPU’s can do.

This is probably the first time that we have seen anything that pushes Apple’s mobile devices in such a way, as although titles such as Epic’s own Doom Resurrection, and Capcom’s Resident Evil 4 looked good, they were far from demonstrating what was really possible. Despite this, the Epic Citadel demo whilst appearing very impressive is actually not that technologically advanced, featuring very few high-end shader effects and a lack of heavy dynamic lighting – something usually found in UE3 games. It does look very good however, and makes the point that having good art is sometimes more important that having the most advanced tech.




The above screenshots show the game running on an iPhone 3GS (pinched from a friend while on lunch) and are easily above original Xbox quality. The level of texture detail is incredible for a handheld device, looking far better than anything we have seen on either the PSP or even Nintendo’s 3DS, and the subtle but pleasing inclusion of some basic dynamic lighting, plus additional tone mapping brings a sense of depth to the image.

More impressive still is the use of a very cleaver LOD system, which means that pop up is never as intrusive as you’d expect when looking upon far away areas, and that the high levels of detail effectively remain on screen for longer.



The iPhone version of the UE3 only supports the use of OpenGL ES 2.0, thus only working on the latest models of the device. Although it’s not just iPhone 4 users that will benefit from this upgrade in graphical quality with titles that use the engine. The demo even manages to run smoothly on the older iPhone 3GS or iPad whilst either missing, or simply toning down specific visual effects.


iPhone 4


iPad


iPhone 3GS

On the 3GS that I used to sample the demo, the framerate largely hovered around the 30fps mark, only really dropping down in areas where lots of detail is visible in wide open spaces. In these areas the framerate can, and will frequently drop down to around the 20fps mark, whilst also introducing some serious input lag that temporality ruins the otherwise responsive controls.

Available memory, and memory bandwidth for the GPU seems to be the main issue here, as does GPU clock speed – it’s faster in the iPhone 4 compared to the 3GS and iPad. However, even with these small cutbacks in visual fidelity Epic Citadel is firmly above other titles on either device, and represents just the kind of visual step forward we could be seeing in future titles.



Outside of the highly polished nature of the demo’s texture mapping, and filtering providing us with lavish image quality, and the subtle inclusion of dynamic lighting (backed up by a custom lightmass GI baking solution), there isn’t much that is all that technically impressive - Specular reflections are hardly new even if the still look great. Most of what makes Epic Citadel look so good comes down to using high quality art assets, and good overall art in general – both of which are lacking in most current iPhone releases.

This is especially true for games running on lower spec platforms. Some of the most impressive looking PS2 titles used good art to simulate far more advanced effects without the means to do them natively, thus holding up against their Xbox counterparts.


Of course, increasing the quality of the art assets used takes both time and money, and one of the reasons that we haven’t seen such high production values in a iPhone game yet is largely down to the software market that it will be entering into. Most titles sell for less than £7 on the AppStore, even less than £3 in many cases, meaning that it will be harder for developers to claw back the increased costs involved of embarking on higher-end projects. And the risks may not be worth the rewards.

However, at least the option is now wide open for software houses to choose, and it’s likely that getting your game up and running using a decent middleware solution like UE3 is far easier than developing your own advanced, fully custom iPhone engine. The real question is whether or not it circumvents enough of the additional development costs incurred by significantly ramping up your art assets. But that is something that can only be answered by individual publishers themselves, and until then, all we can do is watch, wait, and see what happens.

Apple Unveils iPhone 4

The significance of the iPhone’s grip on the mobile gaming market is not to be taken lightly, with the system adopting the kind of multimedia space first eyed up by Sony and the release of the PSP. Since its launch people have gone crazy over Apple’s sleek, and incredibly stylish entry into handheld telecommunications, whilst developers have salivated over its mass market gaming appeal and the financial goldmine it potentially brings to those clever enough to exploit it.

All of the above makes Apple’s official unveiling of the brand new iPhone far too important for us at IQGamer to ignore. The new unit (dubbed the iPhone 4) - showcased along with the new iPhone OS4 - is almost as powerful as the recently released iPad, but at under half of the size and with improved motion sensing capabilities integral to getting a decent gaming experience, along with a higher resolution screen, HD video recording capabilities, and a new multi-tasking operating system.


The iPhone 4 comes in at just 9.3mm thick, some 24% thinner than the iPhone 3GS - what Apple is calling the ‘thinnest smartphone on the planet’, and for the first time will be available in either black or white. The design is remarkably close to the prototype photos that were leaked over the Internet by tech site Gizmodo, with a glass finish on the front and the back, and silver metallic strip going down the sides separated only by two horizontal black lines.

As per usual the unit looks very stylish, but then again it IS an Apple product so that’s only to be expected.

In terms of features, the iPhone 4 has two cameras, one at the front and a more powerful 5-megapixel one round the back complete with digital zoom function and LED flash. It is also capable of recording high-definition video in 720p and at 30fps - exceptional for such a small device. Two microphones are also present along with an increasingly more common noise reduction button.

The impressive 3.5” screen has a wider viewing angle than before, and has seen a resolution boost over previous models as well, packing a total of 326 pixels per inch, across a 960x640 resolution screen. This is around four times as many pixels as the 3GS, which should allow for greater clarity and detail whilst watching movie clips and more importantly, playing games. Furthermore an 800-to-1 contrast ratio was also confirmed, so expect deeper black levels and better upper end luminance making for a brighter, more eye-popping screen.


Moving on, the same A4 processor that powered the iPad now powers the new iPhone 4, thus providing a noticeable jump in graphics quality should developers decide to take advantage of that fact, and of course if Apple’s restrictive software API doesn’t still get in the way.

This A4 processor basically contains the system’s CPU, GPU and video decoder all on one chip, delivering solid 3D performance whilst being incredibly energy efficient. Apple has stated that through the inclusion of the A4 over previous chips, that battery life has seen significant improvements with the no less than 7 hours of talk time, 10 hours of Wi-Fi web browsing, 10 hours of video playback, 40 hours of music, and 300 hours of doing absolutely nothing on standby. That’s pretty impressive, considering Apple’s incredibly poor track record when it comes to battery life on older iPods.

Included inside the A4 processor is one Cortex-A8 CPU core, an Imagination Technologies Power VR SGX535 GPU, and one VXD375 video decoder. All of which provides significant extra grunt over the existing 3GS model making the iPhone 4 a true successor, rather than an incremental upgrade like the 3GS was to the 3G.

Backing up that horsepower is some much-needed, enhanced motion sensing capabilities designed to be more responsive and better suited for gaming as a whole. The gyroscope inside features 6-axis motion sensing capability - reportedly ‘perfect’ for games according to Steve Jobs at the event - and can handle things like full pitch and roll, sensing in a 3D space, not do dissimilar from Sony’s PS3 controllers. Apple demonstrated the improved capabilities of the device using party game Jenga, in which tilting the iPhone forward and backwards, and side to side manipulated movements onscreen with minimal lag and much greater accuracy than before.


Other than the aesthetics and hardware tweaks the most significant upgrade comes with a change of software. The iPhone 4 is the first to use the un-imaginatively titled iOS 4 (previously known as the iPhone OS 4), which brings the hotly rumoured multi-tasking feature to users for the first time outside having to jailbreak their iPhones. Finally you can run multiple apps at the same time without having to close one down to use another while only having to reopen it again later. All you need to do is push down on the Home button and the task-managing interface will pop up allowing you to access applications that are still running in the background.

Unfortunately there was no sign of any flash compatible web browsing software, with users having to make do with the integrated YouTube app for Internet video only. Maybe at some point Mr Jobs will finally lift his ‘no flash’ policy much in the way he did with iTunes DRM restrictions after numerous complaints.

However, Jobs did say that the new iOS 4 would be available for free to older iPhone and iPod Touch users starting 21st June, except those with first-gen iPhones.

Price wise the 16GB version will retail for $199, and the 32GB for $299, both on contract only. No word was given out in how much these would be available for on ‘pay as you go’ or when this was likely to happen, although previous models went on sale via ‘contract only’ for a few months before other alternatives became available.

No pricing information was given for the UK, but we do know that the iPhone 4 will be hitting stores on 24th June, with preorders starting on 15th June onwards. As usual you can expect preorders to sell out within a couple of hours, along with another battle for any free stock to take place on launch day.


So that’s the iPhone 4 in a nutshell. Interestingly, we see the iPhone, iPod Touch and the iPad all eating further into the handheld gaming space. As the both the technology and functionality improves so to will the software. That could in turn leaded to bigger and more ambitious titles being produced, whilst also feeding the casual market with smaller, but more polished experiences, experiences that many people already associated with Apple’s entry into the gaming space, and one that Sony and Nintendo will both have to look out for.

We don’t expect to be getting a hold of the iPhone 4 upon release, or even to have available access to one, but we’re sure to encounter Apple’s latest world dominating handheld at some point, and when we do, we will no doubt endeavour to report our findings.