UE3 - UDK Website browser in UDK game

[liszto]

Hi everyone,
my question can be funny or strange I know. But my team and me wanna create a transmedia game.
A game under Unreal Engine, another part of the game on a website, etc...

So my question is quite simple, it is possible to access to a website in the game with unreal engine or not ?
If this is impossible can we code an ALT+TAB-opening browser with a shortcut ? or something like that ?

I don't find any information except on databases.

Thanks in advance !

 

[Wormbo]

Loading and formatting HTML via TcpLink should be possible. Note, however, that displaying images will likely not be possible because only existing textures can be displayed. It may be possible to create images at runtime using ScriptedTextures, but UnrealScript is definitely not able to decode GIF, PNG or JPEG images in a reasonable amount of time. You could probably move that task into DLLBind code, but the resulting pixel data would have to be drawn to a ScriptedTexture, which you can only do in UnrealScript. Granted, you could build the image incrementally, a few pixels at a time, but it will be slow.

 

[Bi()ha2arD]

Steam has a browser in its overlay, maybe you can do something similar.

 

[liszto]

That was the idea. But is it simple to do ?
I gonna check TCPLink with unreal script and if someone already done something like that.

I thought to use flash & actionscript (and try to load website in .swf) in the game but I need to use Scaleform, right ? And it seems to be not free.

I found this :
http://awesomium.com/

It's simple with Unity but not with UDK :/

 

[_Lynx]

Steam has a browser in its overlay, maybe you can do something similar.

This overlay is a separate process running at the same time, and games are able to call it only thanks to Steamworks integration

 

[liszto]

Thanks I saw that before but I didn't post on it.

So without a steam integration it's impossible to use.
Maybe simulate something like that can be a good idea but this can take a long time :/

 

[_Lynx]

theoretically you can write your own overlay, with webkit-powered browser, like Steam's and add an interaction through DLLbind, however that will require some serious coding.

 

[liszto]

Thanks for your answer !
Ok last question, can we implement this with scaleform UI ? or not ? Maybe open an UI like the F1 bind which is in the Unreal Development Kit ?
So UI with flash and actionscript 3can be possible ?

Thanks in advance