Scaleform v4 is an exciting new SDK release from Autodesk. This is the first version of our industry leading UI SDK which adds support for ActionScript 3.0. In fact, Scaleform is proud to announce that Scaleform v4 simultaneously supports both AS 2.0 and AS 3.0.

Scaleform v4, with AS3 support, has many exciting benefits to offer over previous versions of the SDK:

• New Renderer w/ 2x+ Display Performance - Our all-new 2.5D rendering engine combines multi-threading with support for the latest hardware, making it the fastest hardware-accelerated vector graphics software available today.
• Multi-Threaded Architecture - Scaleform 4 is architected to fully-support multi-threaded applications. Advance and Display logic can now be executed simultaneously on different threads, improving throughput and multi-core engine compatibility.
• ActionScript Performance - Typically, AS3 code executes many times faster than similar AS2 code. Scaleform 4 should offer comparable gains.
• Simplicity - AS3 is an object oriented code base and is more intuitive to use, allowing developers to more easily and naturally script their code.
• User/code base – With a wider user base, AS3 compatibility makes it easier for game developers to find suitable flash artists.
• Troubleshooting - In AS 2.0, many runtime errors would fail in silent fashion. AS 3.0 has a variety of runtime exceptions for common error conditions.
• Runtime types – In AS 2.0, all values were dynamically typed. In AS 3.0, type info is preserved at runtime and used for type checking and performance gains.
• Event Handling - Event handling is simplified in ActionScript 3.0 thanks to method closures, which provide built-in event delegation.

This guide explains the organization and structure of Scaleform 4 and helps customers easily migrate to Scaleform 4.0 from earlier versions. It also provides information on migrating from Scaleform 4.0 to version 4.1 and higher. Note that there will be differences in the code between Scaleform 4 and Scaleform 3.x. Not only have filenames changed, but defines, types, classes and even the directory structure will have some differences. However, using Scaleform 4 should feel familiar to current Scaleform customers, and is relatively straightforward and easy to learn for new users. One of the major new changes to working with the Scaleform C++ codebase, is the use of name spaces. See the following section for more details.