Representatives from Scaleform Corporation have announced a five year agreement with developer BioWare (
Jade Empire,
Mass Effect) to provide the company's Scaleform GFx UI environment for a number of BioWare's upcoming titles.
Scaleform GFx is the company's vector graphics engine for console and PC game developers, which combines the scalability and development ease of authoring tools such as Adobe's Flash with hardware graphics acceleration found in current and next-gen console and PC hardware. According to the company, using Scaleform GFx, companies can change from a programmer-centric static UI development environment to an artist-driven animated UI and texture production pipeline.
The Scaleform GFx engine is built on the core Scaleform VGx hardware accelerated vector graphics technology, which tessellates vector graphic shapes into triangles that modern 3D video cards can render. By converting the data into triangles, Scaleform VGx can output vector graphics many times faster than traditional software rasterizers, allowing it to be used within high-performance full-screen multimedia environments.
"Scaleform shares BioWare's commitment to delivering compelling game experiences via cutting-edge technologies, which improve the quality and streamline the development process. Mass Effect is only the beginning of a long-term commitment by BioWare to deliver an incredibly immersive cinematic UI experience," said Greg Zeschuk, President of BioWare.
BioWare's upcoming space-RPG
Mass Effect will be the first of the developer's titles to utilize Scaleform GFx. It is due for release on Xbox 360 in 2007.
