Bit of a yucky workflow - just doesn’t feel right to me to develop iOS apps on anything but OSX. I converted to Mac from Windows pretty hard though, so I’m fairly reluctant to do anything on Windows these days.
I guess we’ll see exactly what the story is though within the next 24 hours or so…
@dreamora regarding flash: Sure, Apple can change the rules any day, but that is the same for all middleware creators and users.
One month they could say middleware sucks and leads to inferior products, next month they could present a middleware made thing as the next wicked thing at their conference or in their tv spots.
I don´t think you´re right regarding flash being any more on shakey ground than any other middleware solution regarding the current ToS ruleset (Besides Jobs obviously personally disliking flash but yeah, that´s something different again =) Until if ever he changes the rules again due to that which, well, then again affects way more middleware solutions )
Potentially, be it just due to the fact that they had to kill out half the features anyway to target iOS and as such might have decided to kill half the tools too to focus it on what makes sense for iOS, which would give them at least a chance to get it to iOS within the short time they had and their past non-track of OSX development.
But I personally doubt it, I think it will be windows editor, a remote alike tool for remote testing and debugging, potentially a pak transfer function so you can test the real build on your device through Wifi deploy like shiva (as UDK is 100% script driven on iOS anyway) and then can generate a zip with the xcode project etc all ready to compile for transfer to OSX.
thats something thats out of my view much more realistic to expect than a ported toolset, unless Epic has the nerve offering a tool that requires the 27" core i5 or a MacPro to run in the “recommended range” at all.
@gepetto regarding windows or mac dev: Yeah, same here, i was a windows only guy for a long time and then switched to a mac basically to use unity while the windows editor wasn´t out yet. Then it turned out to also be good for iOS dev (and i also got to like some of the mac specific OS features and other software only available for it etc).
I think it can be very teasing for windows focussed developers to not have to use a mac at all, but having worked on a bunch of iOS stuff i think xcode and the other stuff coming with the sdk and only available on mac is very useful and quite needed during iOS dev, so yeah, i wouldn´t see it as ideal at all either if all that wasn´t available at all.
Ugur - unfortunately in this case it might prevent me from checking out this UDK stuff, but maybe that’s a good thing - I’m still a massive beginner with Unity and should really just stay focused 
Unrelated, I was just reading through your blog. Some really interesting stuff in there. This gave me a chuckle though:
Yeah, i meanwhile prefer staying on the mac, too, especially for iOS stuff. I also have a pc next to my mac and use it for everything that runs better than on mac OS or is only available on windows, but yeah, i think its useful to not have to switch between different OS constantly during dev so unless someone has an excellent solution for creating iOS stuff without needing all the xcode stuff and also making me not miss the xcode stuff at all, well, no good to be on windows for that.
I´ll give udk a try in either case, to see what it is like, but yeah, you have a good point regarding staying focussed:
I like to give each technology and platform i see as halfway promising a try, but now more and more languages, tools and target platforms come out every day (the count will further explode next year with around 20 tablets and what not all getting released =) ), so i only give the things i see as halfway promising a try for a day or two and then either it convinces me to the degree where i see longterm potential in it and big real benefit over the things i currently use or its not worth wasting way more time on it.
I´m glad you find the things i post on the blog interesting, thanks for the good words =)
Regarding that quote, yeah, well, that happened in a time where various longtime flash developers had gotten pretty disappointed with flash due to it not evolving fast enough or in the direction they saw as good having sucky performance on most platforms etc, i was maybe just one of those moaning loudest in hope for propper improvement =)
Since then, regarding Adobe stuff, i was in the air for android beta and you see, my last blog post was about trying some air for blackberry playbook stuff and Michaël CHAIZE from Adobe commented there saying: “WOW !!! Congratulations.”
So i guess not everyone at Adobe hates me =D
I think next year will be a big deciding year again, regarding devices for example who takes the lead in big way in smartphone market and who makes it big in the tablet market, how well the next generation of handheld consoles do, if any company releases a 3D tv which doesn´t require sucky glasses and generates a picture that is equally as pleasing to look at as a 2D picture…,
and regarding middleware for example who takes the largest chunk of developers and regarding flash in particular how well they get that molehill api stuff integrated with the editor and old api and how much they can improve general workflow and performance on portable devices.
So yeah, exciting times approaching =)
Good to keep the eyes open and look beyond the known frontiers, but also good to not get distracted too much with every thing that floats by =)
If I was Unity now - just my 2 cents
I would help Geenz bring his CRNMap to the iPhone (plus desk tops)
and help Diogo Teixeira in any way with his VT plugin
I don’t think UDK has Virtual Texturing only Rage video game on the iPhone has this - it’s a selling point and I would LOVE Unity to help these developers.
Unity staff, should concentrate on adding more rendering power to Unity by using Beast to its best and work on a pre-computed lighting system similar to UDK one. Otherwise, there’s no way to compete with UDK right-now (rendering-wise) as tools and features are highly superior on UDK.
Edit:
Its out 
http://www.udk.com/news-beta-dec2010
Getting things from point a to point b was really fast. Happy guy.
Well Beast does have RNM but not compressed, yes they should keep adding Beast stuff!
But there is nothing wrong with trying to help these developers, they going to release there plugin (well VT is) why not remove road blocks if Unity can
Of course, but i would rather go for a native support by Unity itself, the support is always better.
Looks like its coming for Android too…
I just downloaded the December UDK beta with iOS support and I must say… wow!
Of course, the typical UDK workflow is still there, but the sheer quality of the Epic Citadel is astounding (yes, they give you the sources to the Epic Citadel).
If UDK didn’t have the hundred-needed-people-to-work-on-a-game policy and the awful license (25% royalties to Epic + 30% to Apple), it would tear Unity a new one.
In a nutshell, it is visually and performance-wise the most beautiful and well-balanced engine on iOS.
Aside of the fact that it doesn’t support 40%+ of all iOS devices, thats likely true
I’m downloading the December beta right now and looked at the November version. Pretty darn impressive and the quality from some of the developers is astounding. I was looking at an “oil field” demo last night (lost the link, but it’s posted on the UDK forums) and the use of cloth and particles was truly an education in how things should be done. From what I’ve surmised, though, the only people who are using UDK are artists who want to use it to build a portfolio or students who don’t care about making money. I’ve been tempted to ask at the UDK boards if any small indy teams (1 or 2 members) have actually released (and made money) using UDK. I suspect there aren’t many who have, but I’d be interested to know for sure.
I think that if you skip past the part where you need a strong dev team which is strongly focused, UDK would be a great choice for an engine on the iOS.
Sure, scripting might be a nightmare for newbies, but you might as well use Kismet. Overall, the 52.6% you’re left with after selling your game on the AppStore is more than enough to justify such a diverse toolkit. I mean, hell, you get SpeedTree, FaceFX and ScaleformGFx for free. Show me another engine that can do that and I’ll gladly uninstall UDK.
Seems ok to me and the end figures aren’t nearly as dire as they are being made out to be here. Doing the math I came up with the following (note this is based on buying unity with the same level of features as UDK provides).
$3000 upfront cost for Unity Pro and Iphone Pro.
$99 upfront for apple dev license.
Minimum sales of 0.99c app needed to break even is 4428 units.
UDK
$99 - upfront cost for UDK license.
$99 - upfront cost for apple dev license.
Minimum sales of 0.99c app to break even is 282.
Sales before epic royalty claus kicks in for 0.99c app is 7284
I’m failing to see what the short term downside to using UDK is at the moment. Obviously above the 7284 mark you loose an additional 25% of your net profit but, that’s after all other deductions including your contries tax slice. You effectively need to have made 5k after deductions and taxes in order to need to pay epic anything at all!
I’m going to try some UDK development (porting my existing game over) and see if the engine is a viable alternative.
Peter, the engine IS a viable alternative, but it doesn’t appeal too much to the typical hobbyist. Yes, it is great for indie developers - which consists of roughly 3 to 5 members - but your typical “I-WANT-TO-MAKE-MMO-OMG-BBQ!” type of “developer” will get his ears caught in UDK (typical Romanian saying :P).
In the long run, UDK’s license is very appealing, albeit very scary for people who hear about the 25% royalties. If you think about it, 25% of your post-$5,000 revenue is a pretty good deal, considering that if you made it to $5,000, there’s pretty much no way in hell your game is going to stop there.
Considering the varied toolset, good license deal and most importantly no need for a Mac, UDK is steadily creeping into Unity’s territory.
I’m not trying to bash Unity, but lately they’ve been trying to implement so many things that ultimately went haywire, that it’s just not that appealing anymore. Yes, I admit, Unity is much more easier to develop with and has a smooth workflow, but in the end, your game will be “just another AppStore game”. UDK on the other hand is a graphical beast (let’s not forget, it’s Epic we’re talking about - the people who made Unreal with its never-before-seen dynamic colored lights, texture filtering and so on) and a perfect bundle for the average and pro developer.
Sorry Unity, but there’s a new player in town, and he’s got the goods.
I want to point out that the differences in graphical ability between the two is not very different. Most of what you are seeing in the UDK iPhone stuff right now is a very skilled set of artists with the right tools and a large budget. They are creating proper occlusion and a map design that uses it effectively. If you think that UDK is suddenly going to make your game beautiful you are horribly mistaken. The only thing that can do that is a highly skilled texture artist and modeller, as well as a designer who understands the limitations of the hardware and builds from the ground up with them in mind.
For full blast Indies (aka those who make their living off of creating games alone)… the UDK license set may not be ideal unless they are just looking to cheaply “test” the waters of iOS development. For hobbyists like myself… the UDK license set is actually a very appealing way to check out what iOS dev is about. I’ll definitely be checking it out to see if iOS dev is something I want to actively pursue.
That being said… I am now officially a Unity fanboy lol. I definitely won’t be throwing the baby out with the bathwater… Unity’s workflow is just so smooth that I can’t see myself falling in love with anything else atm. It’s definitely a good thing to have options and to have competition as it should lead to some interesting things.