San
Francisco, California —February 21,
2001—Macromedia, Inc. (NASDAQ: MACR)
today announced that Star Wars Starfighter,
the latest flight action game shipping today
from LucasArts Entertainment Company LLC, used Macromedia
Flash Player technology to deliver the
game's user interface to Playstation 2 users.
"The
Macromedia Flash community has long been rebelling
against the dark side of boring, static user
experiences," said Kevin Lynch, president
of Macromedia products. "The great experience
in Star Wars Starfighter shows the incredible
flexibility in delivering Macromedia
Flash content across a wide variety of
devices."
The
Macromedia Flash interface serves as an interactive
front-end on top of LucasArts' proprietary
3D engine, which is capable of rendering beautiful,
high-impact environments demonstrating intense
air and space vehicles in intricate 3D detail.
Orange Design was selected to create the set-up
and controls section for Star Wars Starfighter,
which enabled LucasArts to keep its programmers
focused on developing the story-driven flight
adventure. Typically, game UIs are custom created
from scratch for every game. Through the use
of Macromedia Flash, game developers can create
all game UIs in a single authoring environment
and greatly reduce overall development time.
"By
using Macromedia Flash, we were able separate
the development of Star Wars Starfighter's interface
from the development of the game itself. This
let our core team focus on delivering the best
gameplay possible," said LucasArts' Producer
Reeve Thompson. "Macromedia Flash is a
unique solution for game developers that can
greatly reduce the time required to create
a game interfaces as well as bring a fresh
dynamic style to game Uis."
LucasArts
worked with Macromedia, Secret Level Tools,
and Orange Design to utilize a special prototype
of Macromedia Flash technology for the Playstation
2 platform on this project. The PlayStation
2 computer entertainment system is set to revolutionize
the home entertainment market, offering the
most compelling interactive content and the
capability to be used as a network terminal
in the coming broadband era.
Macromedia
Flash 5 is the standard for producing high-impact
Web experiences. Leading companies like Disney,
Ford, and General Motors use Macromedia Flash
to deliver engaging, branded experiences online.
The broad penetration of the Macromedia Flash
Player ensures developers can author content
that can be immediately viewed by nearly every
person online. Macromedia Flash Player, the
most distributed software in the history of
the Web, reaches more than 96 percent of Web
desktops. Macromedia Flash is also bringing
its unique user experiences to a wide variety
of platforms and devices. Earlier this week,
Macromedia announced Macromedia Flash support
for the Pocket PC platform.
ABOUT
MACROMEDIA
Macromedia is passionate about what the Web can be. Its award-winning products
empower developers to provide the most engaging experiences on the Web, and
enable more effective e-business. Headquartered in San Francisco, Macromedia
(NASDAQ: MACR) has more than 1,200 employees worldwide and is available on
the Internet at www.macromedia.com. |
