UDK November 2012 Beta Released

m4dcow

Landscape on Mobile... and not too much else.

Featured Updates

The November 2012 UDK release provides many new bells and whistles for mobile developers. Stay on the cutting edge with UDK’s support for iOS 6, Retina display and all of Apple’s newly available iOS devices.
Unreal Landscape’s new mobile material system along with UE3’s new mobile shader analyzer also put power in your hands in developing the highest quality visuals. The November UDK also introduces a new Perforce server setup wizard, a tool that makes it easy to start a new project from scratch, Logitech G-key and LED support and much more.
New Features and Functionality

Major iOS Upgrades

• Support for iOS 6
  • The engine now builds using iOS SDK 6.0 by default.
  • The minimum supported iOS version is now 4.3.
• Support for Retina display
• Support for iPhone 5 and 5th-generation iPod touch
• Optimizations for the new iPad mini and 4th-generaton iPad, including the A6X processor
  • Quickly and easily optimize games to support the 4th-generation iPad using UE3!
  • New iOS configuration settings have been added for all these new devices. Be sure to add and populate these sections to app configuration files as needed.

Unreal Landscape on Mobile

• World-class terrain editor now supported on mobile devices!
• Includes UE3 mobile material system
• Compatible with Emulate Mobile Features setting and Mobile Previewer tool
• Mobile support for morphing LOD and PhysX collision
• Read more on UDN

Mobile Shader Analyzer

• New mobile shader analyzer tool determines which materials are creating particular shaders, why they are different and more!

• New command line options: (-DebugFullMaterialReport (cooker), -DebugMaterialLog= (cooker), DebugMaterialKeyMaxCount=<#> (cooker), -DebugShowWarmedKeys (runtime))
• In addition, mobile shader groups allow for game configuration that associates shaders with maps in which they are used. Shaders are not compiled until the particular map loads, decreasing initial load times.
• Config flag that disables fog shader iteration on mobile decreases the number of shaders, thereby reducing load times.

Improved Primitive Tracking

• Track Primitive modes, which allow stepping through individual rendering primitives, are now exposed as console commands and also support mobile devices.
• This is useful when attempting to debug a single draw call and when measuring the performance of a subset of draw calls.
• The new console command is PRIM followed by:
  • NEXT: Selects the next primitive
  • PREV: Selects the previous primitive
  • RESET: Clears the selection, disabling the debug mode
  • MODE: Cycles through the action to take
• There are three modes:
  • Isolate: Renders only the selected primitive will be rendered
  • To: Renders all primitives up to and including the selected primitive
  • From: Renders all primitives starting from the selected primitive

New Perforce Setup Wizard

• Developers using the Perforce integration can walk through setting up a new Perforce server via the UDK installer.

Clean Starter Project Tool

• Developers now have the option to start with a “clean” project with bare minimum code and content upon install.
• This is a great way to begin development of a new game from scratch!

Miscellaneous Mobile Optimizations

• Added bCollapseTouchInput to GameFramework.MobilePlayerInput. It defaults to “off,” but when set to “true” will collapse similar inputs so that fewer events are sent through for processing by the game.
• ProfNodeStart and ProfNodeStop can be used to add very coarse profiling nodes that output to the log. The verbosity of the output can be controlled with ProfNodeSetTimeThresholdSeconds and ProfNodeSetDepthThreshold.
• New FastProject and FastDeProject in LocalPlayer are faster versions of Project and DeProject that manage projection and deprojection.
• Editor mobile emulation now uses post-processing that more closely matches that of the device.
• New simple command line tool IPAViewer.exe in Binaries folder groups and displays contents of .IPA files for iOS.
• iOS high-resolution threading is now only enabled on multicore devices.

Logitech G-key and LED Support

G-key SDK DLL

• Keyboards and headset users can now see G-keys in their game as separate keys instead of keyboard shortcuts.
• For mice, users can now see more buttons than just the basic five that Windows displays. As Logitech mice usually have more than 5 buttons (up to 20 buttons for the G600, for example), all buttons are shown instead of keyboard shortcuts.

LED SDK DLL

• For keyboards and mice that have LED lighting, the game will be able to affect the color at any time.
• This enables the game to initiate special effects, such as flashing red for warnings, enhance ambience with changing colors, represent player health via lights, or any other idea developers dream up!
• For more info and instructions for integration, click here for G-key and here for LED integration

Bonus: Free Epic Art Tool

• Developed by Epic Games Senior Environment Artist Warren Marshall, Carapace is a simple, standalone app that lets you place vanishing points around an image placeholder to flesh out the shell of your drawing. Download it here!

Lamont

Awesome. Can`t wait to get into UDK again.

Snader

Is mobile with this under the same license as the PC version? Free until a certain amount of revenue, and then royalties? Or is the Mobile version still paid?

Lamont

Mobile is under same lic. You need to pay apple ($99) to publish to the iStore and make profit. Apple will take their cut no matter how much you make. From reading the docs, Epic gets their cut after everyone else has (your profit).

Ace-Angel

Clean Starter Project Tool

• Developers now have the option to start with a “clean” project with bare minimum code and content upon install.
• This is a great way to begin development of a new game from scratch!

Finally! Lordy, finally!