Scaleform announces GFx 3.0

Scaleform has announced the latest major version of its Flash game interface middleware GFx.

GFx 3.0’s chief new feature is support for Scaleform Video, a collaboration between Scaleform and Japanese middleware developer CRI. It adds Flash video to the toolkit, with videos now usable as in-game textures, full-screen cutscenes and alpha-composited effects.

It also adds Scaleform CLIK, a set of components and tools to allow interfaces to be quickly iterated and implemented across PCs, consoles and mobile devices, as well as garbage collection for ActionScript code, audio playback for sounds embedded in SWF files, and the Scaleform Analyser for Memory and Performance for quick identification of performance drains and important metrics for optimisation.

“Our objective to ensure Scaleform is synonymous with competitive advantage for game developers and publishers achieves a new standard with Scaleform GFx 3.0,” said Brendan Iribe, president and CEO of Scaleform.

“Scaleform GFx 3.0 delivers a new workflow paradigm including a fully integrated Scaleform Video module, complete prebuilt Adobe Flash UI component set, and other substantial productivity enhancements. With Scaleform GFx 3.0 improving our customers’ production process, an investment in Scaleform is an investment in a team’s ultimate success.”

“We continue to advance our commitment to making videogame creation both higher quality and easier for developers through our exclusive partnership with Scaleform,” said David Rudolph, president and COO of CRI Middleware, Inc. “Scaleform’s integration of CRI Movie offers unmatched workflow, and with our codec’s proven playback and encoding advantages, we’ve achieved a major milestone that will add to our customers’ success.”

Graham Wihlidal, senior programmer at BioWare – a customer of GFx – added: “Scaleform CLIK is great for building video game user interface elements faster than ever before. Scaleform has demonstrated its on-the-ground understanding of production by architecting a framework that truly accelerates development. Scaleform CLIK provides more control to UI designers, while offering an increased pipeline and runtime consistency that is needed for console development.”

As a special introductory offer, Scaleform is offering Scaleform GFx 3.0 to customers who purchase prior to March 31, 2009 at the Scaleform GFx 2.2 price, plus receive the new Scaleform Video module for free.