Scaleform GFx @ EFUG
Last night’s EFUG featured the technology from Scaleform. It was one of the best EFUG meetings yet.
Troy Dunniway (L.A.) and Matthew Dolye (Washington, DC) braved the cold weather to visit Edmonton to spend some time with GSkinner and BioWare. Troy, a game developer veteran, gave a rundown of the Scaleform product and how it is used to leverage swf files (vector graphics and logic) within console video games. Consoles have become extremely powerful and at the same time more complex to develop for. Games too are getting more and more complex and this has forced developers to rely on middleware to develop games that will work across platforms. Scaleform has targeted the 2D middleware integration stack and somehow reverse engineered the Flash Player so that 2D swf files can be rendered and executed within the 3D gaming worlds. Graphic overlay and menu development in these games has typically been an arduous task and never has it been vector based. With Scaleform game developers can leverage the Flash design world to take hud graphics (think Ironman) to the next level. A significant chunk of the Flash AS2 api (up to FP7 or so) is supported. ExternalInterface is also supported to allow roundtrip communication between game and swf. AS3 support is coming.
Matthew went on to demonstrate bringing swf content into Unreal Editor and hooking up the logic for a door key panel, as an example. It was really crazy seeing a futuristic semi-transparent display panel that, among other things, showed lived camera views (real-time audio/video) which you could back away from and walk around. The Unreal3 engine maps the swf in it’s 3d space seamlessly. The antialiasing techniques … unbelievable.
The Gskinner tie-in came next as Gskinner developers demonstrated a brand new component set they have developed for use with Scaleform. They also have created some JSFL-based workflow tools that ease the developments process since this GFx platform has it’s own eccentricities. Since Gskinner developed GLIC (mCOM) and then the Flash V3 components, Scaleform picked the right group do build these components. The are highly optimized and easily skinnable.
It is no accident that the Scaleform guys took the time to demonstrate to the local Flash user group. They are looking to build a network of great Flash developers/designers since the demand for such a skill set in the gaming world is set to explode.
