Epic Games on Android gaming

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Why would you say you don't expect to play a 3d game that well on a device that apparently you claim you are smart enough to overclock, but yet can't spend 10 min of your time to download one of multitude of 3d games in order to test that assumption out?

Just asking.

even freaking angry birds is choppy on my 1.1ghz droid. please explain why my ipod touch 1g plays it fine, and even my 800mhz ipod touch 4g plays it very smoothly with 256mb of ram. at a higher resolution

 

[Capt Caveman]

Gaming on phones is huge untapped market. I have no desire to buy a PSP or DS. But I have about a dozen games on my iPhone that I've downloaded for free or for only a few bucks(EA's 99 cent sales). And for the money, I get a huge bang for my dollar compared to the huge prices for a console or pc game.

Sure they're not the most complex/involving games but for times I'm waiting for the bus, standing around at the dog park, etc... they're great. Just started playing EA NBA11 and surprised how good the graphics are on my iPhone 3GS.

And for my next phone purchase, gaming has now become a factor on what I'd choose.

 

[Glitchny]

even freaking angry birds is choppy on my 1.1ghz droid. please explain why my ipod touch 1g plays it fine, and even my 800mhz ipod touch 4g plays it very smoothly with 256mb of ram. at a higher resolution

?? works perfectly fine on my non-oc'd droid.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

?? works perfectly fine on my non-oc'd droid.

it plays fine i know that, but it's not smooth. i definitely did not notice this til i picked up my ipod touch and did a side by side comparison. it's night and day. it feels 60fps smooth on the iPod touch. the droid doesn't even do 60fps unless you hacked the kernel and even then i dont feel mine is 30fps smooth.

maybe ill film this tonight if i have time. angry birds rio side by side

 

[SunnyD]

Aww, Epic wants to treat the mobile market like the console market? Poor babies, especially given they made their name on that totally NOT fragmented platform known as the PC. Wussification of gaming developers 101, nothing more.

 

[QueBert]

it plays fine i know that, but it's not smooth. i definitely did not notice this til i picked up my ipod touch and did a side by side comparison. it's night and day. it feels 60fps smooth on the iPod touch. the droid doesn't even do 60fps unless you hacked the kernel and even then i dont feel mine is 30fps smooth.

maybe ill film this tonight if i have time. angry birds rio side by side

I noticed the same thing with that game + Homerun Battle. If I hadn't played them on my Touch 1G I would have thought they were great on my OC Droid 1. But I had them both on both and the Touch was noticeably smoother and the controls are just more responsive.

 

[_Aurel_]

The droid has a screen resolution with 4x as many pixels as ipoud touch, in addition to running a couple of apps in the background. This is almost an apples-to-oranges comparison.

 

[MrX8503]

Aww, Epic wants to treat the mobile market like the console market? Poor babies, especially given they made their name on that totally NOT fragmented platform known as the PC. Wussification of gaming developers 101, nothing more.

PC fragmentation is actually different from Android. On a PC, the user adjusts their settings according to the games recommended specs. You can't exactly do this on a mobile device.

 

[QueBert]

The droid has a screen resolution with 4x as many pixels as ipoud touch, in addition to running a couple of apps in the background. This is almost an apples-to-oranges comparison.

Considering the Droid has 2x as much ram, a better GPU & OC'ed like mine has a clock speed almost 3x higher, I think it's very valid to compare the 2. The game looks exactly the same on both, it might have a higher resolution screen but the games don't show it at all.

 

[SunnyD]

PC fragmentation is actually different from Android. On a PC, the user adjusts their settings according to the games recommended specs. You can't exactly do this on a mobile device.

Why not? Only because the developers don't put in the functionality to do so. Once again, poor Epic - too little too lazy. Last I checked game quality settings on the PC aren't the responsibility of the OS either.

 

[zerocool84]

Why not? Only because the developers don't put in the functionality to do so. Once again, poor Epic - too little too lazy. Last I checked game quality settings on the PC aren't the responsibility of the OS either.

Like I said earlier, they're too lazy to spend the time to optimize for Android devices. Who cares if they don't want to. It's not going to make or break the whole platform.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

The droid has a screen resolution with 4x as many pixels as ipoud touch, in addition to running a couple of apps in the background. This is almost an apples-to-oranges comparison.

It's not apples to oranges.

The iPod Touch 1G is a low res device, you're right, but it also uses a last generation ARM11 processor running at 400mhz. My iPod Touch 4G is a current generation running a 800mhz processor.

The Droid is running the same generation processor but at 550mhz only. I have mine clocked at 1ghz. The iPod touch 4G also has the same 256mb of RAM. Additionally, the iPod Touch 4G has the retina display, meaning its 960x640. That is HIGHER than the Droid's 854x480. The fact that it runs 60fps smooth on BOTH a 3 generation old iPod Touch and a current iPod touch tells you something. It makes the excuse that the Droid is an outdated device almost invalid. Plus throw on the fact that I overclocked and an OCed Droid can easily hit 1400ish on Quadrant which compares well with today's phones. The only thing holding it back is the GPU, and if you're telling me I need some state of the art GPU to play Angry Birds, you gotta be kidding me.

And for the last time, people need to stop using Android's multitasking like an excuse or something. Things don't actually actively run unless they're on the notification bar or part of a system process. Just like iOS, most things are saved to state, and a few specific events can multitask.

This is like when Windows Vista came out and pushed the limits of hardware. Of course people complained because it was a night and day difference between XP in terms of speed. It's not apples and oranges. The reason people are fine with 7 today is because we gave 2 years for hardware to catch up. Instead of 2GB machines, we ship minimum 4GB machines, with many people installing 6 if not 8gb of RAM.

You can talk about optimization of apps all you want about Android, but the fact that the OS itself needs an insane amount of horsepower just to do the basic UI tells you one thing. The OS is NOT optimized.

Why not? Only because the developers don't put in the functionality to do so. Once again, poor Epic - too little too lazy. Last I checked game quality settings on the PC aren't the responsibility of the OS either.

And why does phone gaming need to be as complicated as PC gaming with a whole page worth of slider bars? Look, this is a totally separate issue. It's nice to have a page of settings IF we wanted the games to work both on say our dual core devices, the 1ghz devices, the Droids, and even the older HVGA phones. But before we get there, software should at least run smoothly on our fast phones. Games struggle on even the fastest devices. If you can't even make a game that works well on the fastest Android devices, then forget making it work on slower devices.

 

[Aikouka]

Aww, Epic wants to treat the mobile market like the console market? Poor babies, especially given they made their name on that totally NOT fragmented platform known as the PC. Wussification of gaming developers 101, nothing more.

I don't think that I can blame them too much. People are way too self-entitled when it comes to these games. I recall looking at Real Racing 2 HD for the iPad after I got my iPad 2, and they had recently released an update that increased graphic capability specifically for the iPad 2. The screenshots shown were from the iPad 2.

The game had a substantial amount of negative (1/5) reviews, because iPad 1 owners were mad that their game didn't look like the screenshots. I looked at that and though, "Really? You guys can't put 2 and 2 together to see that those screenshots are obviously from an iPad 2?"

I also see complaints all over other game's reviews that state things like "Won't run on my iPod 3G 8GB!" No crap, it even says in the description that it doesn't run on that model (which was Apple's fault more than anything).

I would wonder how much testing a graphical android game would need to determine which devices it would not run well on, and how much flak a developer would get for someone not paying enough attention and trying to run it on an underpowered phone.

 

[gorcorps]

Epic seems to be getting lazy. They stopped dealing with PC games because of the scaling graphics deal and they're whining about the same thing on Android.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Unfortunately I have to go to lunch now but I tried to film Angry Birds Rio on both devices.

The sheer load time on my Droid was pathetic. It was a whole 10 seconds longer or so. Maybe took 5-6 seconds on my iPod Touch to get to the screen to hear music while I was just waiting for my 1.1ghz Droid to load...

 

[SunnyD]

Like I said earlier, they're too lazy to spend the time to optimize for Android devices. Who cares if they don't want to. It's not going to make or break the whole platform.

The point is that Epic is complaining platform "fragmentation" is the issue, when it clearly is not. I don't care if they do or don't want to develop for the platform, but ffs don't complain about fragmentation if you don't feel like putting the development resources forward in the first place.

I don't think that I can blame them too much. People are way too self-entitled when it comes to these games. I recall looking at Real Racing 2 HD for the iPad after I got my iPad 2, and they had recently released an update that increased graphic capability specifically for the iPad 2. The screenshots shown were from the iPad 2.

The game had a substantial amount of negative (1/5) reviews, because iPad 1 owners were mad that their game didn't look like the screenshots. I looked at that and though, "Really? You guys can't put 2 and 2 together to see that those screenshots are obviously from an iPad 2?"

I also see complaints all over other game's reviews that state things like "Won't run on my iPod 3G 8GB!" No crap, it even says in the description that it doesn't run on that model (which was Apple's fault more than anything).

I would wonder how much testing a graphical android game would need to determine which devices it would not run well on, and how much flak a developer would get for someone not paying enough attention and trying to run it on an underpowered phone.

I can blame them. Did they advertise the game experience would be different across the two devices? People should feel entitled if the developer isn't forthcoming about the deficiencies of their title.

 

[Aikouka]

I can blame them. Did they advertise the game experience would be different across the two devices? People should feel entitled if the developer isn't forthcoming about the deficiencies of their title.

By stating that the graphics have been increased for one and not the other, you are inherently stating that they are different. If you have to state things any clearer than that, well... I'm not sure there's any hope for the cognizance of the player-base. Android people do like to call iOS users iDiots, so I guess that works... right?

But you're still ignoring that testing hardware against a specific piece of software is troublesome. Epic is going a few steps further and saying that the software (Android + OEM mods + background processes) on the phone also adds more variables. But do take note that they also state that all smartphones are troublesome compared to relatively gaming-specific devices such as Sony's upcoming NGP.

Epic could most likely easy develop for the Android, but I'd guess that it's about worth vs effort.

 

[SunnyD]

By stating that the graphics have been increased for one and not the other, you are inherently stating that they are different. If you have to state things any clearer than that, well... I'm not sure there's any hope for the cognizance of the player-base. Android people do like to call iOS users iDiots, so I guess that works... right?

But you're still ignoring that testing hardware against a specific piece of software is troublesome. Epic is going a few steps further and saying that the software (Android + OEM mods + background processes) on the phone also adds more variables. But do take note that they also state that all smartphones are troublesome compared to relatively gaming-specific devices such as Sony's upcoming NGP.

Epic could most likely easy develop for the Android, but I'd guess that it's about worth vs effort.

What I'm saying is that they're simply whining. As I said, Epic's roots are in PC Gaming, where they had to deal with this very problem on each and every title they made. Then along came consoles, which every developer jumped on because it simplifies the cost of development. No, I can't blame them for trying to make a buck... but I CAN blame them for bitching about something their company was born on in the first place. If your goal is to sell a title, you'll do the legwork. If your goal is to make money, then you'll take the easy way out.

 

[Patranus]

If Epic doesn't want to take the time on optimizing a game on Android that's their deal. Games are hardly going to make or break a phone ecosystem.

You (false) assumption is that these games *can* be optimized on the Android platform.

At some point the value of investing in base programming things no available in the base OS is outweigh by potential sales.

 

[zerocool84]

You (false) assumption is that these games *can* be optimized on the Android platform.

At some point the value of investing in base programming things no available in the base OS is outweigh by potential sales.

Other people seem to be cross porting games just fine. If they don't want to take the time then that's on them. Of course they can be optimized, you (false) assume that these games can't. They just don't want to be it financial or whatever reason they come up with. It's not going to make or break the platform.

 

[MrX8503]

Why not? Only because the developers don't put in the functionality to do so. Once again, poor Epic - too little too lazy. Last I checked game quality settings on the PC aren't the responsibility of the OS either.

I didn't know there was a smartphone that you could replace it's GPU or CPU. I don't see your PC/smartphone corelation, it's not the same thing.

 

[ivan2]

why is he keep mentioning Neo Geo Pocket (NGP)? that thing's like 12 years old.

 

[BenSkywalker]

PC fragmentation is actually different from Android. On a PC, the user adjusts their settings according to the games recommended specs. You can't exactly do this on a mobile device.

Yes, you absolutely can. RoboDefense, one of the more popular TD games on Android, has graphics settings you can adjust based on the power of your phone.

You can reach a much larger audience if you develop for the iPhone and the game runs better because you can devote time to optimizing it.

Optimization is almost completely in direct opposition to portability. This is exactly like the Mac OS vs Windows battle, and Apple is playing their hand the exact same way. Worked spectacularly for them last time too..... for a few years at least.

To the broader point, anyone who actually read through the article in the OP would have noticed that Epic blasts how bad iOS devices are too optimize for also. Sounds like they are looking for someone to come in and push OpenGL on mobile platforms, likely someone with experience in pushing a side API against an established platform, maybe someone that could stand to benefit from it and leverage it, best bet would be someone with extensive developer relations.

This interview seems more like political posturing then taking sides, if anything they seemed to have made it clear that Sony still stomps iOS or Android and does so easily.

why is he keep mentioning Neo Geo Pocket (NGP)? that thing's like 12 years old.

NGP is Sony's working name for PSP2.

 

[MrX8503]

Yes, you absolutely can. RoboDefense, one of the more popular TD games on Android, has graphics settings you can adjust based on the power of your phone.

You still have more flexibility on a PC though. Its pretty sad that robodefense is a top Android game. A friend of mine was playing it on his Droid 1 and it ran like shit. Maybe he didn't know about the settings. If an Android exclusive can't even run properly, I'm not sure why people complain about Epic not porting Infinity Blade. I'm still amazed that infinity blade is a mobile game and it looks even better on iPad2

 

[zoiks]

Unfortunately I have to go to lunch now but I tried to film Angry Birds Rio on both devices.

The sheer load time on my Droid was pathetic. It was a whole 10 seconds longer or so. Maybe took 5-6 seconds on my iPod Touch to get to the screen to hear music while I was just waiting for my 1.1ghz Droid to load...

Not sure what you're running on your Droid. Clearly the majority of people have different experiences than you.