'Epic Citadel App' Showcases iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch Capabilities

By Hector Cortez Sep 3, 2010, 1:38 GMT

In Epic Citadel, players navigate through a castle using simple controls and Multi-Touch gestures.

Epic Games today announced its Epic Citadel App is now available from the App Store. The app showcases the technical capabilities of Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 on iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.

In Epic Citadel, players navigate through a castle using simple controls and Multi-Touch gestures. Epic Citadel's visuals, special effects, and environment are part of Project Sword, Epic’s newest game -- an action role-playing adventure game exclusively for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch developed by Epic’s studio, Chair Entertainment, creators of the Xbox LIVE Arcade games Undertow and Shadow Complex.

A small team of Epic’s programmers, artists and testers created Epic Citadel in just eight weeks of development time.

Features of Unreal Engine 3 for iOS platforms (iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad) include:

Bump offset mapping - Also known as parallax mapping or relief mapping, bump offset mapping enhances the visual appearance of stone walls and rocks providing intricate textures.

Normal mapped architecture - Brings stunning detail to bricks and ground surfaces within the environment.

Texture blending with painted weight maps - Refines nuances on roads and terrain, making them rich and lifelike.

Global illumination - Unreal Engine 3’s built-in global illumination system, Unreal Lightmass, provides realistic lighting and shadows with minimal development resources.

Dynamic specular lighting with texture masks - Helps create authentic cobblestone roads and vivid reflective marble surfaces, while lens flares and light coronas add dramatic emphasis when panning across light sources.

Real-time reflections and animation - Environment mapping enables real-time reflections on objects such as the statue inside the cathedral. Dynamic movements of trees and banners are made possible through the use of vertex deformation and skeletal animation.

Epic Citadel is available for free through the App Store on iPad, Phone and iPod touch or from www.itunes.com/apps/epiccitadel.