It's been a busy couple of weeks for Unreal Engine mobile developers. Whether you're looking for new features, a wealth of assets, or live training, we have your back. As always, Unreal Engine is free to use. Download it now!
NEW GOODIES
Unreal Engine 4.9 recently shipped with many new mobile features, including efficient dynamic shadows, dynamic point lights and decals.
Mobile VR got a boost with the update to Samsung Gear VR SDK 0.6.0, and NVIDIA AndroidWorks is now integrated and supported out of the box. We've added OpenGL ES 3.1, Immersive Mode support, asynchronous audio decompression, and better orientation features for Android as well.
As for iOS, there's new support for Cloud Kit, Remote Push Notifications (thank you, Get Set Games!), iOS 9 SDK and Facebook SDK 4.01. There's also improved functionality for iOS In-App Purchases.
On top of mobile platform upgrades and fixes, there are major new workflow improvements across the board. Advanced search within the Content Browser, smarter functionality within Collections, and Quick Asset Management are a few. We also continue to pour resources into the evolution of Blueprint so you can work faster than ever using visual scripting. There are 70 pages of release notes for 4.9, so check out the useful additions for yourself.
While VR creators got a treat last week with the free release of our Showdown demo, this week we gave away 7,600 assets from the Infinity Blade universe. The content, which cost $3 million to produce, is built for high-quality mobile projects, and you can use it in any UE4 project.
Also, to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Infinity Blade series of games, Infinity Blade III is free, with Apple promoting it as Free App of the Week.
PLUGINS & INTEGRATIONS
Unreal Engine 4.9 ships with a Flurry Analytics plugin, and there's also an Apsalar integration for mobile attribution analytics. Native support for TapJoy, iAd and AdMob has been in since 4.2.
Be sure to check out the Multicast Analytics Provider, which enables you to easily hook into any analytics package, and numerous ones at that. You can also use our built-in File Logging Analytics Provider to debug the analytics process.
As we extend plugin access via the Marketplace, you'll be seeing a lot of new offerings from companies who are building or have already released their UE4 integrations.
We're working to bring you plugins for GameAnalytics and AdColony, for starters. Huge shout out to prime[31] for the efforts around AdMob (integrated), Chartboost (coming soon), Vungle (coming soon) and Localytics (integrated).
It's also worth mentioning that awesome developers in the community have built various plugins and released them for free (again, looking at you Derek and the GSG team - thanks).
SPOTLIGHT: UNREAL MOBILE SUCCESS
During E3 we had the pleasure of sitting down with ActionSquare CEO Jae-Young Kim about the incredible success of Blade, the first mobile game to win Korea's top game award.
Developed with Unreal Engine 3 by ActionSquare and published by 433 Creative Lab, Blade has been one of Korea's top five-grossing mobile games, and now Blade: Sword of Elysion is coming soon to North America. Here's the interview.
ActionSquare is now building its future on Unreal Engine 4. It's hands down the prettiest content I've seen on mobile yet.
Turning the focus to virtual reality, CCP Games' Gunjack is one of the most hotly anticipated mobile VR experiences.
Set in a futuristic EVE sci-fi universe, Gunjack is a fully-featured arcade shooter built with UE4 that is ready for the official launch of the Samsung Gear VR platform. As evident in the trailer below, the visuals are fantastic.
We've had the pleasure of helping CCP show Gunjack to folks behind closed doors, and can confirm you should check it out.
SEE YOU IN SAN FRANCISCO
Our finest road warriors are making their way to San Francisco to provide an all-day workshop for mobile developers on November 5. GitHub is graciously opening their doors for this special event, and registration is open.
Seating is limited, so sign up soon if you want in! Here's our tentative schedule:
| 9:00-10:00 a.m. | Check-in |
| 10:00-11:00 a.m. | State of Unreal Engine |
| 11:00 a.m.-Noon | Authoring 2D & 3D Content for Mobile with UE4 |
| 12:00-1:00 p.m. | Lunch (provided) |
| 1:00-2:00 p.m. | Creating Great Mobile VR Experiences |
| 2:00-3:00 p.m. | Future of Mobile: Metal, Vulkan, Input & the Cloud |
| 3:00-4:00 p.m. | Optimizing Performance: Scalability, Textures & More |
| 4:00-5:00 p.m. | The Other Side of Game Dev: Project Setup, Multi-Platform Development & Analytics |
| 5:00-7:00 p.m. | Happy Hour |
Finally, here are a few of our favorite reaction tweets to the surprise release of the free Infinity Blade Collection.
As always, we welcome any feedback or questions in the comments section. We're honored to serve such an amazing community.