The announcement of Unreal Engine 3 for Flash Player 11 was huge and goes to show just how powerful Stage 3D is. If you’re in any doubt about the potential of Flash Player 11 then just take a look at the video below, showing a technical demonstration of Unreal Tournament 3 running in the browser.
But the hardware acceleration of Stage 3D isn’t the only thing worth getting excited about. You ever thought about how they actually ported Unreal Engine’s source code to Flash? After all, re-writing just over a million lines of code in ActionScript 3 just isn’t practical. Well the conversion was achieved using Adobe Alchemy, which enables the conversion of C and C++ code into high-performance ActionScript bytecode. If you want to know more then take a look at this great insight into Alchemy presented at Adobe MAX.
So there you have it. Flash is now capable of delivering a high-quality console gaming experience directly within the browser. And if you’re considering writing 3D games content for the platform then you really can’t get any better than the Unreal Engine.
I’ll leave you with a quote from Epic Games’ press release:
UE3 is constantly evolving, with new breakthroughs, technologies and optimizations for multiple platforms. Flash Player 11, with its hardware accelerated, programmable graphics pipeline, is now capable of running triple-A gaming content authored for high-end platforms using the industry’s latest tools and technologies.