Death of Director?

[Mctittles]

I've been wondering this ever since the last few installments of Flash. Director (used to make shockwave movies) has had a few advantages over Flash and people still use it mainly for niche areas or games. However, Flash is becoming more and more merged with the features of Director with every release. I had thought that Macromedia was purposely gimping Flash in order to keep their market with people who make shockwave movies, however with the new features I see in 8, it seems like the need for Director/Shockwave might be non-existant. Opinions?

[cancerinform]

I never worked with Director but once I made an application for somebody in Flash with audio and a scrubber you can move for the audio and this had a little problem. The scrubber had some kind of back effect when you move it, which could not be fixed with AS. Everything else in the movie was perfect. So i was told by the client that he will do this in Director, where he would not encounter the scrubber problem.
Don't know he ever did it though. But it may tell something about some problems flash may have, which are not apparent in Director.

[rene hazekamp]

Death of Director, Not Yet.
There is still lots of things you can't do with flash that are fairly easy in director.
Shockwave 3d, multiple monitor output, midi and dmx interaction to name a few.
there are so many xtra's for director that you don't have for flash.
Flash 10 will probably be the end of director, so it will still take 4 or 5 years.

rene hazekamp

http://www.renehazekamp.com

[Dricciotti]

Article (http://www.macromedia.com/software/director/resources/understanding/) on Macromedia's site comparing the two (Of course they wont come out and say its useless). Ive only used it for a small amount of time (a while ago) and wasnt impressed with anything it did but I am sure it does still have its small advantages. I havent seen as much content on the web using it lately though.

[Mctittles]

Yea, I think if they do keep updating it they will focus on it for cd-rom/offline content instead of internet content more.

[0vidiu]

director is awesome with 3d and has a REALLY robust player.. far away from "death"...

[gerbick]

Shockwave3D hasn't been updated since 2000. Intel considers it a flop and took it mostly off of it's website, and if anything, Adobe now owning Macromedia it'll probably die quickly because they have enough stuff to publish to DVD's and has effects without having to re-teach their staff how to support Lingo as well.

hell, even the person that created Macromedia Director wants it back (http://java.sys-con.com/read/78128.htm)... that's a sure-sign it's most likely going to die. Same way that Freehand is not included in the Studio 8 Package - but they can charge the same price still?

As much as I love Director... it's probably going to have one more iteration, then death. And it's not because of Flash.

It'll be because of Adobe.

[erixon]

When i tried Lingo I thought it was so simple that it felt uncomfortable and the interface was difficult.

Shockwave3d looks cool on the paper and demos, but 3d is very complex, both in math and create good models. So its harder to do something for fun. I don't think 3d is very important, but I would love to see hardware accelerated stuff and faster scripting in Flash.

[gerbick]

That's where we differ. 3D is very important.

It's not about how easy/hard Lingo is - it's a weird beast, especially how they just "tacked on" the Shockwave3D stuff - but it's moreso who's going to support it.

And as it goes, Flash doing real-time 3D is laughable. It's plugin just sucks at that; Shockwave's plugin works great.

but I'm honestly more a fan of Anark's (http://www.anark.com) output.

[0vidiu]

And as it goes, Flash doing real-time 3D is laughable. It's plugin just sucks at that; Shockwave's plugin works great.

but I'm honestly more a fan of Anark's (http://www.anark.com) output.

But there are so few people outhere(at least my impression) that are doing 3dgames in shockwave.. Why is that?

[gerbick]

cost would be my first reason. director costs almost 3 times as much.

second...your information isn't 100% correct. there are more shockwave games than you'd think; in fact at one time, shockwave was being used in making games like "Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?" and the like.

But as far as 3D, flash's games are typically faked 3D...pre-rendered . not the same as a true game engine.

there was one site, ghoul3D comes to mind; as well as a 3D forum regular - can't immediately remember the name that did mostly 3D within director. real 3D.

[Mctittles]

That's some interesting info gerbick. Personally I have not made anything major with Director, only tried out the demo once or twice. A few years back I remember my first impression on director was speed when compared to using flash like I'm used to. I could scrub the timeline soooo fast on my failing 500mhz, while flash would start to slow down after so many objects were on screen. I also liked the way their objects were handled, taking away the possibility of creating multiple ones on the same layer and not being able to animate them. Lastly it rendered very fast as well when dealing with "sprite" type animation. I've noticed recently more people are making games with Flash that are more like the games were once only possible with Director/Shockwave. I wonder though if this is because of improvements with the Flash engine or if our computers have been upgraded enough times to make flash's slow rendering engine able to accomplish this.

[erixon]

>That's where we differ. 3D is very important.

3D is mostly full view update. That mean easily 100% CPU and at least I have noticed that computer sounds very much. With 2D you can easier update partially and reduce the required power. a 3D game needs quality and speed to feel good in another way than 2D that can look good on slower machines (premade stuff etc).

>It's not about how easy/hard Lingo is - it's a weird beast, especially how they just "tacked on" the Shockwave3D stuff - but it's moreso who's going to support it.

Well say it just bad. And thats a reason for people to not support it.

>And as it goes, Flash doing real-time 3D is laughable. It's plugin just sucks at that; Shockwave's plugin works great.

Its difference of hardware and software accelerated, and scripting or internally optimized features. Still actionscript is quite slow but at least they got some function to speed up bitmap. I can accept the limits because of the easy/small distribution. Do you expect a fun coffee-break game or BF2? Personally I think retro games can be real fun because its good game play and unique idea. I feel as a bigger production and bigger cost in development it can be harder to motivate an open-source performance limited solution.

[gerbick]

What kind of 3D are you talking about that requires 100% of your processor? Have an example? I mean... the way you make it sound, there's some bad examples floating about that do very limited things badly. For the record... vectors and 3D all require math.

Regardless, how about I share some ActionScript examples/attempts in 3D where it basically will even kill my 3.2ghz P4 w/ 2gb of RAM and a Nvidia GeForce vidcard with 256mb of RAM.

We could go 'rounds all day. But the OOP manner of Lingo was what made it better for games, kiosks, and general media publishing. With ActionScript 2.0, Flash stepped into the OOP market and onto the toes of Director.

I still say that Shockwave3D was a killer idea; it's just not been updated yet. Or better yet, the *.dcr file format hasn't been opened up much like the *.swf file format was. Which is what's reason number 3 why Director is going to die... they never opened it up to the community other than how to create Xtra's/plugins for it. That's it. Hell, I've been sitting on an idea for Shockwave3D that could help spread it's usage; but it's a closed API where I can't publish to *.dcr unless I use Director each and every time. 'Tis not the same for *.swf.

As far as hardware/software goes... Flash doesn't have access to DirectX nor OpenGL directly - well, in Flash 8, I see that OpenGL does do it's part in the Mac player speed bump, a method more than likely "borrowed" from GlobFX's Flash Player (http://www.globfx.com/products/swfplayer/) which used OpenGL to speed up it's player speed something pretty cool - whereas Shockwave3D has not only access to DirectX and OpenGL via Lingo, but also to the Intel chip for SSE and MMX speed enhancements directly - and the AMD chips as well. This means that textures can use the graphical sub-systems of those aforementioned graphic frameworks.

Flash still can't say that.

It's only sped up if the CPU is fast. Or if the author does it well, and right in the first place. But to be brutally honest, that's the same for Flash as well - do it right, and it'll fly. Add some code or errors, and it could stall in places.

Lingo's not bad. Not at all... in fact, it's more C++ like than AS is - which is more like ECMAScript 262. It's treatement of objects still is a delight. But not as initially "welcoming" like AS was.

read: It's harder.

And as far as what kind of game... I'd like the ability to do it all. A 3D engine within Flash does exists - quite a few good ones in fact - but it would be nice to do it all from the coffee break type of game to BF2.

[qualehead]

IMO - to think of Director as flash's big brother or as an alternative to flash is wrong.

There is alot of cross-over between the 2 app's but director's strengths aren't in web development etc... but in 'real world' interactive media, such as the kiosks you get in airports and science museums aswel as heat, light and sound sensative devices and myriad other things.

I can't imagine flash absorbing these skills from director because they are not required. director can take inputs from custom made interfaces and data engines and a whole stack of more industrial styled things that flash is never going to morph into - director is hear to stay i feel!

[PAlexC]

I don't think Director is going to die. Heck, the last article I read was on using an xtra to attempt multithreading in a Director app. It's silently gotten VERY powerful, but yes, Shockwave is kinda dead. It's a big hungry player that doesn't launch as quick as the FP does.

I think it'll be re-born as a multimedia standalone application development tool. I think you could build some really cool client-side stuff to compliment Flash content with it.

[Mctittles]

When I was originally thinking of this was more along the lines of the internet side of Director with the shockwave plug-in that I see mainly used for games. I figured the new effects built into flash 8 would turn more people against using shockwave for internet games more. That could still be true, but I forgot to think of all the off-line use that people use Director for so perhaps they will be making a new Director soon to support that crowd more.
As far as not being able to compare Flash and Director, I think they are a totally comparable medium. Especially when dealing with on-line applications, however I have published .exe files for Flash use off-line before as well.

[PAlexC]

Well, if it's Shockwave you're talking about, I think it has the capability to go head-to-head with Java applets, and not just for games. It just doesn't have the same development community or corporate interest. Kind of a shame, I've seen some kick-ass stuff in the past year or two.

[Mctittles]

I think alot of the bigger web game developers (pop-cap to name one) do use java. And it turns out rather nice, although the updating process is not as easy as flash.

[csdstudio]

Director is quite a bit more powerful, ever look at its code reference? It makes the AS code reference look like a Dr. Sues book. And now with MX2004 they even added Javascript syntax if you wish to replace lingo syntax, go try the demo. I too think Director is here to stay.

[erixon]

Personally I disliked the word cluttering and odd indenting in Director. If it now support more C-like its of course nice.

Its hard to say what the ideal solution is. Faster scripting/software functionality could benefit more or less all computers but 3D is mostly for those who having newer computers. Solve 3D we are into more complex solutions and speed things, and question is what is enough. For me Flash is very impressive, of the movie and plugin size and wide usage. Being into of creating a complex 3D game, it can feel closer to choose a Windows solution for example and the freedom of speed and less limits.

Director is maybe not dead, but the Flash community is definately more hot and interesting to follow.

[Wok]

I only skimmed the thread sorry if I am repeating other posts…

You don’t need to learn lingo to use Director, it now supports JavaScript.

Director still offers many thing flash doesn’t; file system access, True 3D of course, and options to import and use a much wider range of media. I think that while Flash is taking a lot of the market Director is (unfortunately) far from obsolete.

PS coding with out brackets is good when you’re feeling lazy.