At today’s Adobe MAX event, Angry Birds developer Rovio and Unreal Engine creator Epic Games both demoed products built in the newly launched Flash Player 11.
Angry Birds isn’t much of a surprise, seeing as how the game is running on multiple mobile devices, Google+, and Google Chrome. Adding Flash to the mix only reaffirms that Rovio could put its best-selling game on Facebook’s games platform anytime it wanted to — and to date, it still hasn’t although there are plenty of pretenders. Adobe and Rovio say that the game was built in Flash Player 11 using the Starling framework, which is an ActionScript 3 2D framework developed using the recently-announced GPU accelerated 2D/3D APIs. At the event, Rovio GM Andrew Stalbow said the developer hopes to bring “the full Angry Birds experience” to the Flash platform in the next few months.
Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, meanwhile, makes full use of Flash Player 11′s 3D capabilities in its MAX demo, but the company didn’t commit to any specific game launches for Flash — on Facebook or anywhere else. Epic Games already has a thriving business in the console space between its in-house Xbox 360 Gears of War franchise, its Infinity Blade franchise on mobile via subsidiary Chair Entertainment, and its technology licensing of the Unreal Engine. Given social game’s recent outreach to more “hardcore” video game players, it’s not hard for us to imagine that Epic Games will soon enter the social space with a game that leverages its engine.
Source: Inside Social Games
Wednesday, October 5, 2011