Engine support multitasking with small preview

Palm is currently demonstrating Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3 running on a Palm Pre Plus at the Game Developers Conference this week. The company managed to get the engine working on webOS just two weeks after receiving a test version of the Unreal Development Kit, according to CNET. The technology is currently used in PC and console games such as Gears of War 2 and Unreal Tournament III.

Although the same engine gathered attention when it was previewed running on the iPhone, the webOS variant allows users to multitask while keeping the game running in the background. A thumbnail even shows the game view, with images refreshed once a second.

Palm recently announced its Plugin Development Kit, a set of tools designed to make it easy for developers to convert iPhone games to webOS. The system is said to enable users to recode games in a "matter of days."

It is unclear when the final version of Unreal Engine 3 might be on the way, although Epic claims the project represents a high priority.

By Electronista Staff