With the advent of HTML5/WEBGL gaining popularity, Adobe knew it had to move fast. Within a matter of two years, they designed and implemented one of the largest platform updates I’ve seen in the industry- Flash Player 11. It sports direct GPU integration allowing for console quality games to be possible through the browser. If this wasn’t big enough news, they have been working with Unity and UDK to enable an export format from those [now] game tooling platforms. Below is a video of the Unreal Engine 3 running within the browser:

I’ll be spending the next couple weeks writing my own engine for Flash 11 and will update here when I have something working. The new API is not as easy compared to the standard display list or even Papervision for that matter, however it allows you almost total control over the GPU shader pipeline. While ActionScript 3 (AS3) can get the job done, I wonder how long before the haXe community starts implementing the new version. I’m super excited to experience such a radical new set of tools for game development!

Related external articles: 
http://www.epicgames.com/news/unreal-engine-3-supports-adobe-flash/
http://blogs.unity3d.com/2011/02/27/unity-flash-3d-on-the-web/ 

 


Author: Jonathan Dunlap
Jonathan is a veteran software architect, author of IsoHill, humanitarian, and has worked with Bigpoint Inc, CrowdStar, ePrize, and Microsoft.
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Flash/Flex/AIR, Game Development, Uncategorized