Fans of Epic's Unreal Engine have been long trumpeting its praises on the iOS. However, while Infinity Blade has seen widespread acclaim, including a very promising review here on 148Apps, Dungeon Defenders, another game made using the Unreal Engine, hasn't seen near as much success. One specific issue keyed on in our official review of Dungeon Defenders were the performance lags that occurred when there too many things happening on screen.
Luckily, the iPad 2 has come to our rescue and Dungeon Defenders developer Trendy Entertainment is happy to announce that lag is now a thing of the past. Apparently a perk of developing using the Unreal Engine is that you are by default writing code that is compatible with dual core PCs. This technology can now be applied to the dual cores found in the iPad 2, thereby kicking the prior slowdown to the curb, with minimal effort on their end.
Though I was initially skeptical about this news, as you can see in the video above and all remnants of stuttering have gone the way of the Dodo. I guess this is just one more perk of using the Unreal Engine. Here is to hoping that other developers are taking notes.
Last month we told you that Dungeon Defenders: First Wave would be landing on iOS in the near future, and now it seems the time is officially upon us. Developer Trendy Entertainment has announced that the tower defense/RPG hybrid will be making its App Store debut on December 16th. The game will also be available for PC early next year, and players will be able to port their characters from one version of the game to the other seamlessly.
Perhaps the most interesting detail about Dungeon Defenders is that it's powered by Epic's Unreal Engine 3, the same engine which was featured in the recently released Infinity Blade. A key difference however, is that Infinity Blade was handled by Epic itself, while Dungeon Defenders is a third-party affair. So, how well will an outside party handle Epic's tool set? We'll find out for ourselves tomorrow.
If console and PC gaming is anything to go on, then this should all work out rather well. Epic has licensed its engine for quite a while in other mediums, and the results have been mostly positive. Developers have enjoyed access to a powerful, yet easy-to-use engine which creates very impressive visuals. The downsides are that after a while a lot of games start to look alike because they're all made with UE 3, and while outside parties can still make very nice games of their own, Epic knows all the tricks behind their own tools, so they're the only ones who can truly unlock all the power of Unreal.
Still, it's a net gain for the industry and we look forward to seeing what Dungeon Defenders can do once it makes its grand debut. We've been looking forward to this game for a while now and the wait is finally over. Here's hoping we're in for pleasant surprises rather than massive disappointment.
