Epic Announces Unreal 3 Engine Support For Flash, w/ Video Demonstration

This is some welcome news. See, while I love gaming across consoles and handhelds, I have a particular weak spot for flash games. I play them regularly, and I’ve even started learning how to make my own. I knew that there were some 3D engines that had flash support, but hearing that Epic Games is throwing the Unreal 3 engine into the mix is really fascinating. I can only imagine what sort of games are going to be coming to the flash portals in the near future.

But enough gushing from me. Here’s a snip from the press release itself!

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.

Flash Player is a key technology for gaming on social networks and the Web, and with UE3 will usher in the leap from simplistic 2D game experiences to world-class 3D gaming on the Web. With its new hardware-accelerated Stage 3D APIs, Flash Player 11 allows 1,000 times faster 2D and 3D graphics rendering performance over Flash Player 10. Developers can now animate millions of objects with smooth 60 frames per second rendering and deliver console-quality games on Mac OS, Windows and connected televisions.

Good news for indie devs, good news for flash programmers, and good news for gamers in general I say. Only one problem: “Simplistic 2D game experiences”? Says you, press release writer! 3D is great, but there will always be a place for 2D games. But I can understand the emphasis – it’s Epic Games, 3D is kind of their thing. And I can see why, given the video below.

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