Epic to Give Away Unreal Engine 3 Kit to iOS Developers

Epic Games have confirmed plans to release the Unreal Development Kit (UDK) as a free package for iOS developers. The tools will allow programmers to employ the highly-acclaimed Unreal Engine 3 for their iOS games, and up the ante from a graphical standpoint.

According to a report by Cult of Mac, the UDK is actually Epic’s “free” or “lite” version of their Unreal engine, meaning it will not allow full access to everything the studio has worked with over the years.

Nonetheless, developers will still gain access to the most important part of the kit - the tools that apply next-generation quality graphics, such as those found in Epic Citadel, or the upcoming Infinity Blade for iPhone and iPod touch.

The Cult notes that while there’s currently no official release date for Epic’s UDK, the developer said that content and tutorials were to be released to the developer community as the planned launch date approaches.

For those who are not familiar with the Unreal Engine, it is a video-game engine developed by Epic Games and first illustrated in the 1998 first-person shooter game Unreal.

Ever since its debut, it has been the basis of many games, including the widely popular Unreal Tournament series, Deus Ex, Turok, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six games, Gears of War, BioShock, BioShock 2, Destroy All Humans!, and Batman: Arkham Asylum, just to name a few.

The engine was primarily developed for first-person shooters, but it has been successfully used in a variety of genres, including stealth titles, MMORPGs like Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, as well as RPGs with Mass Effect, and The Last Remnant.

The Unreal Engine has its core written in C++, which makes it extremely easy to port to many platforms, therefore allowing many game developers today to support the likes of Mac OS X, and video game consoles including Sony’s PlayStation 3, Microsoft’s Xbox 360, and even older machines like the Sega Dreamcast.

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