EDIT: Some inconsiderate people posted spoilers in this thread. Don't read this if you want to avoid the spoilers. -Null ---- It's here, it's beautiful, it's universal. But the question I have to those lucky enough to play Infinity Blade on both iPad and the handheld iDevices is simple: Which version reigns supreme? As a gesture-based game, does your hand obscure the screen on the smaller devices? Is the action harder to see? How do the graphics compare? I've played it on iPad and was astounded. Anyone gone through with both? Very interested.
I tried out on both . . . ipad and iphone 3gs. . . cant decide on which has the more effective control . . . .looks-wise ipad hands down. . . . .bigger is better after all. but in terms of being able to dodge left and right as well as block effectively . . . . the smaller devices present faster reflex capabilitas. . . .no. Once the screen on the iphone was all smudged from the hacking and slashing tho, I found some swipes were being ignored or not pushing through as per plan or intended. Still struggling with parry in general . . . .mostly goes to scratch!?! Must Keep Screen Clean!!!
Thanks for the input. Does "but in terms of being able to dodge left and right as well as block effectively . . . . the smaller devices present faster reflex capabilitas. . . .no. " mean that iPhone/iPod is more responsive (at least, allows for your character to respond more quickly) than iPad? Does it merely mean that the dodge buttons are located more "ergonomically" (sp)? I'm really curious about the different experiences.
I bought the iPad version, and I haven't seen the iPhone version in action yet - full disclosure. I personally think the iPad is quite a bit better for controls. I imagine the large screen makes it much easier to time attacks and hit the dodge/defend buttons. Based on what I've seen though, the visual presentation on the iPhone is superior. It still looks great on the iPad, but the textures on the character models in particular seem to be lower res. Also, the lighting on the character models seems very basic on the iPad. Based on the screen shots I've seen, the iPhone version seems to have more advanced lighting on the characters. The backgrounds and environment seem pretty much the same. The visuals bothered me a bit at first, but I when you're playing it isn't a big deal - and again I prefer the larger screen. The game is a total blast too. The concept is brilliant - semi realistic sword fighting where the character's attacks match your strokes on the screen. Great idea for the touch interface. And the graphics and EXCEPTIONAL animation really sell the experience. I've only gotten through the first bloodline since I only had about 30 minutes to play it, but it does seem a little too easy. I hope the difficulty increases with each bloodline. The problem is the enemies seem to move really slowly. It's pretty easy to place their direction of attack early and parry, dodge, or block. And I also thing after a break the enemies are exposed for too long. I found myself purposely letting them recover because the 'button mash' style of slashing is boring to me. Also, this game is ripe for multiplayer. It would play a bit differently, but executed well I can see it being one of the best multiplayer experiences on any platform.
Nausicaa, Thanks for the feedback. I, too, have played it on the iPad, and it's pretty spectacular. As for the multiplayer, I'm really curious as to what their plans are. The most obvious would be a 1 on 1 sword fight thing, but they might get creative... How bout...a co-op, with one player being the "sword" character, and the other being an archer? They would each have their own screens, but the world would be synchronized. There would be new enemies, including enemies that attacked from range, and the archer would have to kill them / deflect incoming projectiles from hitting the warrior. Thus, they depend on each other: Warrior dies, archer gets shredded by the monster...Archer dies, warrior gets demolished by ranged attacks. You could even "draw" the bow back with a nice pinching motion, with aiming similar to metal gear solid touch.... But yeah, I'm really interested in the graphics / gamplay on iPhone 4 and iPod 4. Anyone seem them firsthand and can compare to iPad?
Hi, I played on iTouch4G and Ipad and the IPod was far superior. Dont know if its the resolution that pulls the ipad away from the visual quality that the ipod offers. The Ipad lecks : Reflection Shaders, Offset Bumpmapping and Specular. Thats VERY nice effects that make the game look really nice on the iphone3gs/4 and Ipod Touch 3/4, just not on the IPad. On the Ipad the Textures are ofcourse the same, they just look more "blury" because of the size of the screen, but the leck of all advanced effects on the Ipad dissapoints. The Iphone4 has nearly the same resolution and uses the same A4 chip. If you compare both Versions side by side, the IPad looks really BAD. The blurrier textures and no effects makes it nothing special on the Ipad (graphics wise). But this problems occured already in Epic Citadel. Same stuff here, there are missing effects on the Ipad. Epic, please just 2 words on this. Please. If its the Bandwith, then its simple, no go. But why else did they do this ? There should not be any hardware differences, besides the RAM amount, but the 3gs runs fine with all effects even with the lower ram amount. Wonder, but somehow this makes the visual experience on the ipad only half as nice as it should be.
Both play well but the iphone 4 is supreme. Better textures and high resolution on a small screen makes it look real smooth and xbox360-like. Gameplay is better to, because on the ipad you cant hit the shield button that fast when holding it with 2 hands. I have experience when saying this I have both the devices. Great game thats for sure.
The location of shield button on iPad makes game play not very comfortable. So either you use dodge a lot or you use shield a lot. It just can't be both.
iPhone 4 is graphically superior. But that's it. iPad wins hands down for me. The tiny(well in comparison to the iPad) screen on the iPhone 4 sometimes mistakes my slashes for a dodge or vice versa, and sometimes when I attempt to parry a downward blow with an upward swipe, it registers as a block. The block button might be odd on the pad but I seldom block, preferring instead to dodge, dodge, dodge and parry the last hit. I managed to beat the God King on my 4th bloodline and then 7th bloodline with the iPad(only just started 8th) versus the miserable 12th bloodline on the iPhone 4, which I won by sheer damage. iPhone 4 = awesome tech demo. iPad = actual game, well, at least for me.
Strange that when you defeated the god king, it starts a new bloodline and says "padre, lagavoodsay". did i die?
Disagreement I own an iPod Touch 4 and an iPad, and the iPad version is FAR superior. Regardless of marginally better textures on an iPhone 4. Everything looks and plays MUCH better on an iPad, sure the shield button could be off to one side for easier access, but other than that it is better in every way.
Hi, strange stuff you tell. If you think that the graphics on the ipad are superior, wake up. Du you also think, that Crysis looks better on Low settings than on High ???? The ipad version lacks all advanced graphic effects. No dynamic light, no normalmaps, no reflections. Could you please tell me, why less effects look better ??? The Screen is bigger, thats all, the quality sucks on the ipad, nothing special, NO UT3 EFFECTS !!! Unreal Engine 3 lives of its normalmaps and dynamic effects, on the ipad they are simply not available, why does it look better this way ? On the Ipad the game ist nice, but graphically it simply sucks, if u compare to the ipod touch 4. The game looks even better on the lowres Iphone 3gs, because it uses all effects there. Thats the first time in my life i hear, that less effects look better. Strange, look again in both devices. DrFrog
iPhone4 vs iPod touch4 I'm actually more interested in how the iphone 4 stacks up against the ipod touch 4. I'm wondering if there's any difference, major or minor, seeing as the iphone 4 has 512 mb of memory (same amount as the xbox 360) and the ipod touch 4 has 256 mb. They both have the same processor and screen resolution but I'm willing to bet infinity blade runs at a faster framerate on the iphone 4 than any other idevice, simply due to its relatively huge memory. I think the game runs at about 30fps on the ipod touch 4. If anybody, developers or just gamers like me, knows anything about preformance on iphone4 versus ipod touch 4 I'd be glad to hear it.
Hi, The amount of Memory has nothing to do with the speed of the game. Its the resolution of the textures that CAN be limited by the amount of RAM, but infinity blade runs fine with all effects of the ipod touch 4. The IPod Touch 4 should be exactly as fast as the iphone 4 but it is not, actually the ipod touch is FASTER. The iphone has tasks running in the background that an ipod does not need (the whole phone application for example). Thats why the ipod touch 4 IS faster than the iphone 4. And forget about constant 30 fps, both devices run way under 30 fps in complex scenes. We are talking about mobile devices and unreal engine 3, the next iteration of phones should make this game run more fluid even in complex scenes. DrFrog
the iphone version is better because you can do moves faster. iPad screen is to large and sometimes you might miss the dodge or parry
I wouldn't be surprised if the texture quality for the iPod Touch 4 is lower than when playing it on the iPhone 4. I remember when the iPod Touch 4 was launched and when people played Epic Citadel on their iPT4, the app crashed because there's only half the amount of memory. So Chair had to reduce the texture quality for the iPod Touch 4 (and iPad).
This Game runs VISUALLY THE SAME on the iphone 4 and ipod touch 4. I checked the memory footprint with the debugger and the game uses 102mb of memory. On the iphone 4 AND on the ipod touch 4, so if it uses EXACTLY the same amount of memory, why should the textures be better on the iphone ??? The Textures are 1024x1024, Normalmaps too and the Specular Maps 512x512. There are only 2 players on the screen at the same time. This makes 1024x1024 x 2 + 512x512 bytes = 4,5 mb for both players. Take 10mb of textures for the world and around 5 mb for the meshes. Thats all for graphics. Around 20 mb for a scene and in the next scene you can load the next textures, so you only need about 20mb, in worst case 40mb, because of deformation data for dynamic meshes. Why the hell should they use lower res textures. Today people tend not to know how much RAM 256 mb is. PCs need Gigabytes, because they use memory very inefficient. An XBox360 has 512mb and you think 256 are not enough for the ipod touch ??? Infinity Blade runs THE same on both devices, the only difference is that the ipod touch runs 1-3fps faster depending on the scene. I mesured with the development tools, so thats not estimates. Only the Ipad runs FASTER than the smaller devices, but thats because it lacks the advanced effects and looks BAD. DrFrog
Calm down. It was just a suspicion. Maybe you missed the first part of my post "I wouldn't be surprised if....". I never said I knew this for fact, it was just a guess based on what happened with Epic Citadel. The first version of Epic Citadel caused would crash on the iPod Touch 4 because it doesn't have enough memory to run the app with the same textures as the iPhone 4 version. That was made obvious by Chair updating the app so that the texture quality would be reduced for the iPod Touch 4 version, and that was evident in a screenshot comparison I saw a while ago. Epic Citadel also had reduced texture quality on the iPad version. The iPad had already been launched before the app was released, which gave chair prior-knowledge of the problem. So the final build of Epic Citadel takes into account the iPads resolution and RAM, and reduces the texture quality accordingly.
Hi, Sorry didnt want to sound impolite. I believe you that chair told that with the textures, but somehow this game uses only 102mb of mem on my iphone4. Dont know why, but the mem does not rise. I could only imagine that the debugger is not able to trace the whole ram. Nice point ou told with the resoulution stuff. I will try to rip off the textures during runtime and compare them, perhaps this brings some light. I am just pissed off, because i am preparing a game for 3 months now for the ipad and i NEED normalmaps to make the game look nice and now it seems like i couldnt use them in udk3. Hmm writing something on my own would suck very bad. Hope i find another engine that is nice too and get all my stuff out of udk3. Drfrog
