iGame Radio

Recently, Virtual Programming told the world that they had been getting chummy with Epic Games. Specifically, VP was a key development partner in helping Epic out with releasing a Mac OSX version of their UE3 SDK. We wondered just how chummy this relationship was, and more importantly, what we Mac gamers might get out of this friendship, so we shot over a few questions to the UK developer.

Brad Cook, their Director of PR and Marketing, very kindly handled the job of getting our questions answered by VP CEO Mark Hinton:

1. Epic Games recently added Mac OS X support to the Unreal Development Kit (UDK) and you were a key development partner for that. What help did you provide to make this happen? What was it like working with Epic Games?

We provided the key engineering resources that enabled Epic to bring the UDK to the Mac. Epic was an excellent development partner. They made sure we had access to their engineering team, and they stayed in constant contact with us.

2. Do you believe that the Mac version of the UDK will require UE3-based games ported to the Mac to significantly increase system requirements over what is currently seen now?

I assume you’re asking if UE3-based games will require higher system requirements on the Mac than they currently require on Windows, if one compares on an apples-to-apples basis (no pun intended). No, we don’t expect that to be the case, but ultimately that will depend on the publisher’s decisions and what system requirements they’re comfortable with.

3. Was Apple involved in any way with adding Mac support to the UDK? If so, what was it like working with Apple on that side?

We did this work with Epic without any involvement from Apple.

4. Do you have specific plans to port UE3-based games to the Mac? Can you name any games currently in the pipeline?

We don’t have any specific plans at the moment, but Epic supports us 100% and has said they will recommend us to publishers of UE3-based games who need a developer. So even if we don’t publish those games, there’s a good chance we will work on the Mac versions.