Epic Games is finally letting game developers make Mac OS-based games with its free Unreal Development Kit. The company released the newest monthly update for UDK this week that adds Mac OS support to the mix. This should allow game developers that create their project with UDK to port their games to a whole new audience. Epic first released the Unreal Development Kit back in late 2009 but it only supported making stand alone game titles for the Windows operating system at the time. In December 2010, Epic added support for making games for Apple"s iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad.
Epic Games hasn"t exactly been supportive of Mac gamers in the past. In 2007, the company announced that Unreal Tournament 3 would be released for the Mac via MacSoft. However that Mac game port was never completed. Hopefully this new move will finally allow Mac gamers to play Epic"s last game in the Unreal series. Since then the company has mostly concentrated on the PC, console and iOS platforms for its games including this week"s release of Gears of War 3 for the Xbox 360 console.
The new September update to the UDK also puts in additional support for iOS devices that will allow UDK-based games to run from either AirPlay or HDMI display ports. There"s also some additions to the foliage editor and a number of other new game development features, changes and bug fixes. There are a large number of both free and commercial games that have been released that have used UDK as the basis.