The news was announced at MAX by Tim Sweeney:

On Tuesday during the Adobe Max conference in L.A., Epic CEO, founder and technical director Tim Sweeney announced UE3 support for Adobe’s Flash player.

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Industry veteran Sweeney showed a live demonstration of UE3 running inside the recently-released Adobe Flash 11 during his keynote at the conference, using the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 game Unreal Tournament 3 as an example.

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UE3 works well thanks to Flash 11′s hardware accelerated, programmable graphics pipeline, Adobe said. Flash is now “capable of running triple-A gaming content authored for high-end platforms using the industry’s latest tools and technologies,” the company said in a statement.

UE3 licensees will be able to access new Flash features, and more information is available at the engine’s official website.

Hopefully this will be included in the UDK soon if not in next months release.

But to calm the hype a bit, the reality is, it costs much more to develop a high end game in Unreal 3 compared to current web games but this will open up a whole new high end market and allow game developers to add another platform to export to. Game sites will become full on consoles.

Next-gen consoles for XBOX and Playstation aren’t being updated until 2013-14, that seems a long way away and they just might not exist as we know them when that time comes.

The next console just might be the web on any device, TV, pad, hardware consoles… Unreal and Epic are preparing for this multi-platform game development world along with Unity, Flash and others.

WebGL, Canvas grouped with html5 are final and providing new landscapes to draw on and new ways to make levels to beat. Most browsers and platforms are supporting this technology. Tools like Three.js make that very fun. Mozilla Firefox, Chrome and Safari are including WebGL + canvas and mostly hardware accelerated, making Javascript an even more powerful glue of the web.

Adobe is going low level with Flash ‘Molehill’ 3D and hardware acceleration platform that companies like Unity will be including as an export target.

Microsoft has finally laid out their plans. Silverlight is alive with Silverlight 5 / 3D powered by XNA (any surprise? guess it isn’t dead) and hardware acceleration throughout Internet Explorer, this appears to be Microsoft’s version of the future.

Plugins like Flash, Unity, Silverlight, others will continue to push the bounds cross platform where standards cement the technology behind it for a platform to reach the next innovative step.

Mobile has blown up the scene with native and low-level focus, causing web platforms to also go low level for more performance thanks to Apple and now Android. Native languages like C, C++ and Objective-C came roaring back as the hardware was reset a bit back to late 90s/early 2000s processor and graphics power. However with mobile and cpu cost on platform as service system, native will stay more over the coming years.

Games, interactive and entertainment projects and apps are going to be even more fun. New opportunities all over the place.  Game on!

$50 in the Unity Asset Store but worth it, I hope it is expanded to import many vector formats.

The author is Juha Kiili is the author of this awesome piece of tech and it is seemingly doing well. This could be a full fledged 2d toolkit easily with many import/export capabilities.

Features of RageSpline

• Creating 2D meshes and lines with bézier-based splines.
• Outlining with single color, variable width per control point + natural/sharp switch per point.
• Solid one color fills.
• Linear gradient fills with two colors and GUI-adjustable scale, offset position and rotation.
• Emboss styling with two colors and GUI-adjustable adjustable scale, rotation and smoothness variable.
• Texturing support with GUI-adjustable scale, offset and rotation.
• Automatic physics generator.
• Adjustable vertex count for outline, fill, emboss and physics.
• Example game included: RageCar.

Other Asset Store must haves like EZ-GUI and Sprite Manager make the 2D game creation experience in Unity very focused on the game development and design with performance handled.

cocos2d is a great objective-c engine for iOS development (and Mac development).  It has it’s limitations but for small 2d based games with physics or platformers with sprites it rocks.  It has made it to 1.0 and many games are made with it on the Appstore.  Unity and Cocos2D make up a good portion of the games in terms of engines used on the Apple Appstore for small to midsize game studios and indies (2500+ games are made with cocos2d).

cocos3d

cocos2d is getting a 3d extension in cocos3d for using 3d mesh/models etc.  Currently it only imports POD models but this could be good for smaller isometric 3d games or 2d using 3d models.  It is early so this will take some time to mature but good news for improving engine performance needed to handle 3d.

This could easily become the most popular/used 3d engine made with objective-c as cocos2d has done with 2d… there aren’t many pure objective-c game engines. The one downfall is multi-platform even though Objective-C is fun.  Unless it is solely a iOS or Mac title then going with a  multi-platform engine or a custom C++ engine and using Android NDK and an Objective-C wrapper on iOS is best for port economics and performance.  That can also be used as desktop and other platforms this way. But for iOS development cocos2D is great.

cocos3d Features

Some of the key features of cocos3d are highlighted in the following list:

• Seamless integration with cocos2d. Rendering of all 3D model objects occurs within a special cocos2d layer, which fits seamlessly into the cocos2d node hierarchy, allowing 2D nodes such as controls, labels, and health bars to be drawn under, over, or beside 3D model objects.
• Pluggable loading framework for 3D models exported from familiar 3D editors such as Blender, 3ds Max orCheetah3D, or through industry standard 3D object files such as Collada or PowerVR POD, or even from your own customized object file formats.
• Imported 3D models can include animation sequences.
• 3D model objects can be arranged in sophisticated structural assemblies, allowing child objects to be moved and oriented relative to their parent structure.
• 3D models, cameras, and lighting can be manipulated and animated using familiar cocos2d CCActions, allowing you to quickly and easily control the dynamics of your 3D world, in a familiar, and easy-to-use programming paradigm.
• 3D objects can be covered with dynamic materials and textures to create rich, realistic imagery.
• Mesh data can be shared between 3D objects, thereby saving precious device memory.
• Mesh data can freely, and automatically, use OpenGL vertex buffer objects to improve performance and memory management.
• Culling of 3D objects outside of the camera frustum is automatic, based on pluggable, customizable object bounding volumes.
• Automatic ordering and grouping of 3D objects minimizes OpenGL state changes and improves rendering performance. Pluggable sorters allow easy customization of object sorting, ordering, and grouping for optimal application performance.
• Automatic OpenGL state machine shadowing means that the OpenGL functions are invoked only when a state really has changed, thereby reducing OpenGL engine calls, and increasing OpenGL throughput.
• Sophisticated math library eliminates the need to use OpenGL ES function calls for matrix mathematics.
• Fully documented API written entirely in familiar Objective-C. No need to switch to C or C++ to work with 3D artifacts.
• Extensive logging framework to trace program execution, including all OpenGL ES function calls.
• Includes demo applications and Xcode templates to get you up and running quickly.

Learn cocos3d

You can learn more about writing 3D iOS applications using cocos3d, by referring to:

• cocos3d homepage.
• cocos3d Programming Guide.
• cocos3d API.
• Demo applications in the Demos folder in your cocos3d distribution.
• cocos3d Development Roadmap.
• cocos3d Forum
• cocos3d Importing: Converting COLLADA to POD

Khronos announced today that WebGL, the great OpenGL web hope, is now officially final for the 1.0 version

WebGL already sees great support in numerous engines including my favorite Three.js from the infamous mr. doob.

There is already a thriving middleware ecosystem around WebGL to provide a wide diversity of Web developers the ability to easily create compelling 3D content for WebGL-enabled browsers.  These tools include: C3DL, CopperLicht , EnergizeGL, GammaJS, GLGE, GTW, O3D, OSG.JS, SceneJS, SpiderGL, TDL, Three.js and X3DOM.  Links to these authoring tools and WebGL demos can be found at www.khronos.org/webgl/wiki/Main_Page.

It will take some time for WebGL to propagate.  It is ready and on in Chrome and Firefox by default in betas. Safari it can be enabled via app parameter.  IE and MIcrosoft have yet to chime in, will we see DirectX for the web or adoption of WebGL.  Time will tell…  Until then Unity and Flash with the 3d api Molehill are forging ahead.  I am sure we will see an export to WebGL for Unity down the line but there are still some interesting script execution speed issues that compiled code in Flash and Unity Web Player will still be faster on.

So Khronos isn’t stopping at WebGL, they are now tackling WebCL or OpenCL for the web just like WebGL is OpenGL for the web (currently at the OpenGL ES 2.0 level which is nice because that is big on mobile — mobile and web games are at about the same level).

Khronos is also today announcing the formation of the WebCL™ working group to explore defining a JavaScript binding to the Khronos OpenCL™ standard for heterogeneous parallel computing.  WebCL creates the potential to harness GPU and multi-core CPU parallel processing from a Web browser, enabling significant acceleration of applications such as image and video processing and advanced physics for WebGL games.

New features available in the current Incubator build include:

• “Molehill” 3D APIs for Flash Player and AIR — A new set of low-level, GPU-accelerated 3D APIs that enable advanced 3D experiences across devices through the Adobe Flash Platform runtimes.
• Cubic Bezier Curves — Using the cubicCurveTo drawing API, developers can easily create cubic Beziers without requiring custom ActionScript code.

This is really a new era of browser based game development support that is going to be very exciting. It was announced at the Flash Games Summit by Thibault Imbert (Adobe Product Manager) and Lee Brimelow (Adobe Platform Evangelist) after they explained and showed examples to the audience of what “Molehill” could do for flash games.

• Flash 3D API Molehill Preview
• Flash 3D API Molehill Download

Thibault has a list of available Molehill enabled 3D engines already:

• Alternativa3D
• Away3D
• Coppercube
• Flare3D
• Minko
• Sophie3D
• Yogurt3D
• Zest3D

Also a test of hardware accelerated molehill vs software rendered flash:

• Check 2D animation with the display list (check your CPU usage)
• Check 2D animation with Molehill (check your CPU usage)

These are exciting times. Today, at the Flash Gaming Summit in San Francisco (of which we’re proud Gold Sponsors), Adobe has announced the public availability of a beta version of the Flash Player, codenamed Molehill, that has a very interesting new feature: hardware accelerated 3D support.

Molehill exposes a very low-level shader-based interface to the graphics hardware. Adobe has decided to focus on that low-level part, and do that really well. The molehill pre-release will not be shipping with a 3D engine, scene building tools, model and animation importers / exporters, physics, lighting or lightmap creation tools, etc.

The article states that Unity will be keeping the Unity Player and the developer will decide when to target Flash or Unity Players or other platforms like desktop, mobile that are currently available and use the rendering platforms that work best with each (DirectX/OpenGL/OpenGL ES/Molehill… maybe WebGL in the future).

There is no announcement of a date but Unity is pretty fast to add updates and new platform versions so if they take this on they will ship. Currently they mention using Unity and coding with AS3 within Unity script or using Mono.NET C#/Javascript/Boo as currently used. An intersting option is using Unity to create content and code in C#/Javascript over AS3.

Unity addresses these issues here:

Q. Is this the end of the Unity’s own Web Player?

Absolutely not. The Flash and Unity Web Players both have their strengths.  We’re excited by the opportunity to target the Flash Player and all of its features with Unity, but there will be plenty of experiences that the Unity plugin is better suited for. It will be up to developers in the end, to decide whether they want to target only the Flash Player, only the Unity Web Player, or some combination of the two (now things are getting interesting!)

Q. What programming language will I use?

You’ll have two options:

1. For people with a Flash background:
   Target our ActionScript API directly from Flash. Think:
   var go:GameObject = new GameObject(“Just normal ActionScript 3 code”);
2. For people with a Unity background:
   Script your content in C# / JavaScript / Boo, like you’re used to, and have Unity automatically translate it to ActionScript when you hit publish.

Adobe is good to move to a model where hardware acceleration is part of the platform.  Since Molehill is low level and competing products like Unity, WebGL, and others would take that in time, opening it so others can build tools on their platform will attract interesting new developments like this.

Cocos2D is a game engine similar to Flash in that it is a 2d engine but it natively renders to OpenGL ES.  Cocos2D-iphone was originally a port of Cocos2D, a python game engine.  But the similarities to Flash and DisplayObjects = Nodes, Sprites, Scenes, Layers etc. This helps to port games over fairly quickly or start in productive in cocos2D.

Having this in javascript is a great thing! It runs on html5/canvas/javascript.

What is cocos2d-javascript?

Cocos2d-javascript is a 2D game/graphics engine based on cocos2d-iphone but designed to run in the web browser. It uses the latest features available in HTML 5 allowing real-time rendering of 2D graphics without the need for plug-ins such as Adobe Flash.

While HTML 5 is still new and not fully supported across all browsers it won’t be long before the vast majority of web users are able to enjoy all that it offers. When this time comes cocos2d-javascript will be an excellent way to develop games and applications.

To see a small sample of what is on offer, please check out the demo section.

cocos2d engines are now available on almost all platforms, so if you are building a 2d game and need a 2d engine typically with Box2D physics, cocos2d offers lots of ways to get the game out there with some porting work.

• cocos2d-javascript (web)
  • cocos2D-javascript site
  • cocos2d-javascript at github
  • cocos2d-javascript docs
  • demos
    • Sprites
    • Tile Maps
    • Jump ‘n’ Run
    • Mario demo
    • Breakout demo
• cocos2d-iphone (mobile)
  • cocos2d-iphone site (objective-c)
  • cocos2d-android-1 (java)
  • cocos2d-android (java)
• cocos2d – original python (desktop)
  • cocos2d site
  • cocos2d python download
• cocos2d other
  • cocos2d-x c++ (C++ port for win, iphone, android-ndk)
  • Similar to cocos2d – andengine (android java)

Adobe, or Macromedia previously, owned 3d games with Director (8.5 with Shockwave3d) for a time, but that was really before mainstream was ready (2000-2001-ish).  There was a lack of computers with dedicated video cards and GPUs.  Today, even the bottom line computers have a decent video card. Also, the surge in mobile and the need for native level access to graphics hardware has spawned this new battle (Thanks Apple!).

Unity has the pipeline, 3d and has been doing that well since 2005/6. They emerged from Director and even have some members of the Director team working at Unity.  Adobe is just getting back into this, they dropped Director (or left it wavering) and are now going to attack on the Flash level not just against Unity but to hardware accelerate it for mobile and better video playback hopefully (they currently hardware accelerate scaled video to full screen).

Like the Silverlight vs. Flash product competition, Unity vs. Flash is actually a good thing for developers and both platforms.  With Torque3d wavering, html5 and WebGL more than a year out (and WebGL maybe 2-3) for broad mainstream support (I am looking at you IE), this is the time for Flash to move on this and Unity to keep going they way they have.  Hardware acceleration makes these plugins relevant and ahead of the current standards emerging in html5 and WebGL.

I love using both tools and they have come a long way since painful Director lingo/w3d/plugin hell for hardware accelerated gaming, apps and interactives. The gaming industry and web are merging, these two products should get a good portion of that projected $87-billion total game market’s annual revenue in five years, as investment advisor Digi-Capital predicts.

It is also a great time to be a developer having these companies vie for developer support.  It is exciting that hardware acceleration, 3d games, and widening game industry are all emerging and will be a big thing for the next few years at a minimum.

It is finally time to kick it up a notch. Game on!

Google Chrome 9 enables WebGL support by default. “WebGL is a new web technology that brings hardware-accelerated 3D graphics to the browser without installing additional software” and it can be used to create cool applications like Google Body Browser, Field, Aquarium and more.

The update for Chrome 9 also sandboxes Flash, WebGL and plugins like extensions and tabs so that using them will be more secure and not crash the browser or the tab. Hopefully Safari has this soon, and then a few years from now IE may get it. Or they will put out their own DirectX web plugin so everyone has to write it twice like currently in game development. /sarcasm