Posts filed under 'Director PR'
When Director 11 was released last year it really didn’t seem to get mentioned anywhere. It wasn’t until a few months ago that it showed up on MacUpdate. Things are quite different this time.
Shockwave 11.5 has been in the top 5 of the MacUpdate Most Popular downloads since it came out. Director 11.5 got covered on MacNN, MacWorld, and Macsimum News. (Can you tell I’m a Mac guy?)
The screenshots from a few moments ago show the Director story was very popular on MacWorld, and Shockwave is currently #4 in the weekly downloads on MacUpdate.
It seems as if the Adobe PR department has been much busier with this version of Director than they were with the last. That seems to be a very good sign that Director is here to stay for a bit longer.
March 26th, 2009
A new version of Director was released today, along with a new version of Shockwave.
You can download Director, Shockwave, as well as many demos at this location (you’ll need to login with your Adobe ID).
Let the fun begin!
Update: Director 11.5 can also be found on Amazon.
Update 2: List of features:
- Enriched audio capabilities Make your games sound as real as they look with 5.1-channel surround sound, real-time mixing, audio effects, and DSP filters.
- Enhanced video capabilities Enhance your user’s multimedia experience using H.264-video integration that provides full-screen, high-definition video in multimedia applications and games.
- New 3D importer for SketchUp Rapidly create rich 3D environments using the many ready-made 3D models available through Google SketchUp.
- Streaming support Stream audio and video over the Internet using RTMP support.
- New data type Access and manipulate binary data using the ByteArray data type.
- Enhanced physics engine Support for dynamic concave rigid bodies.
- Enhanced productivity Support for multiple undo/redo operations.
- Cross domain policy
- Enhancements to the text engine
- Open Type Font (OTF) embedding support on Macintosh OS.
- Class-based kerning support.
- Hinting support at a member level.
- Enhancements to platform and browser support
- Macintosh OSX 10.5 (authoring and runtime) support.
- Firefox 3.0 support.
More information can be found on DirectorForum in this thread.
March 23rd, 2009
The uDevGames contest recently announced the winners. The contest is “iDevGames’ unique grass-roots initiative to highlight our community to gamers, as well as a development platform capable of producing the most innovative cross-platform titles in the industry.”
Constellation (created with Director) won 2nd place in the Best Overall, Best Gameplay, and Best Presentation categories!
Congratulations Matthew!
March 18th, 2009
For those that develop games and are going to the Games Developer Conference in San Francisco next week be sure to go to the Director-related session. It will be held on Wednesday March 25, 2009 from 10:30-11:30am. The session description says:
Allen Partridge, Adobe Systems, hosts professional 3D game developers Pieter Albers and Diederick Groesbeek, Xform Games, Malachy Duffin, CanDo Interactive, Steve Becerra and Richard Chala, Mockworld, and David Mullich, Spin Master demonstrating & discussing design and development strategies for creating profitable, high-performance games for the web. Topics include technology challenges, design approach, business advantage & browser-based 3D.
I wonder if Director 11.5 will get shown at that time? Hmm…fits in well with the April 4th shipping date on Amazon.
March 15th, 2009
This past week a FOSE 2009 took place. I’m not sure what FOSE stands for but the event was a technology tradeshow and conference for government IT. Someone from Adobe was speaking and said that there are about 200,000 Director developers.
Is that number larger than you thought? Smaller? Needless to say, this sparked a bit of discussion on the Direct-L mailing list this week. Does the number indicate “active” developers? People that occasionally use Director to maintain old content? Hard to say.
Several people that run sites talked about their stats*, and that brought up more issues. I personally know that stats can “show” most anything you choose. Using Google stats you can at least be sure you have the same program doing the analysis. 🙂
German Directorforum
Absolute Unique Visitors: 290,512 (1 year)
International Directorforum
Absolute Unique Visitors: 22,195 (11 months since launch)
Dean’s Director Tutorials
Absolute Unique Visitors: almost 65,000 (1 year)
And here at Director @ Night
Absolute Unique Visitors: 18,484 (11 months, was down for 1 month)
So what does this mean? Hard to say. I do know that this site does very little, but I still get visitors. I’d love to see stats on the Adobe Forums. Personally I think the 200k number is a bit high, but I would be willing to go with 100k. The bigger item of interest (to us Director developers) will be what happens to this number in the next few years as the new versions of Director get released. Amazon still shows Director 11.5 for April 4th. Adobe has been at the Game Developers Conference the past two years, so marketing is increasing. I even saw an ad for Director on my gmail page.
So are there 200,000 Director developers out there? As a Magic 8-ball might say, “Ask again later.”
*Stats are from Martin and Dean on Direct-L
March 15th, 2009
A new case study has been posted on Adobe.com that shows how some amazing 3D games are getting created by Mockworld. Very cool.
Be sure to check out the case study.
August 21st, 2008
Looks as if two new Director sites popped up recently. You can drop by CodeRecipe: A recipe for 3d game coders which seems to focus on using the Ageia PhysX engine to do 3d gaming in Director, and Adobe Director Online which is the site for Director users from Director users.
Most Director sites haven’t been really lively in the past few years (including this one) as compared to five or ten years ago, so it is good to see a few sprouts popping up here in the springtime.
April 22nd, 2008
For those that are in to this sort of thing, drop by SocioTown. SocioTown is a 100% web-based 3D Social MMOG (Massive Multiplayer Online Game). It’s playable in a browser with no downloadable client required. It utilizes Adobe’s Shockwave Player.
SocioTown is the biggest and most sophisticated browser-based 3D virtual world to date. Players can enjoy a fully immersive and persistent 3D environment such that hasn’t been seen on the web yet. Player data is stored in database servers, so users can play anywhere from home, work, or school without skipping a beat.
The screenshots on the page look really sweet.
March 29th, 2008
The official press release is out.
For immediate release
Major Product Upgrade Advances Multimedia Authoring Environment
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Feb. 19, 2008 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced Adobe® Director® 11 software, a major upgrade to the company’s powerful multimedia authoring tool for building interactive applications and rich content. The latest release contains a flexible and easy-to-use authoring environment enabling multimedia authors, animators and developers to create powerful interactive applications, games, e-learning and simulation products…
The Director product page has also been updated. I like the new box 🙂
February 19th, 2008
From the wealth of online posts, looks as if Director 11 will be here tomorrow…and it might look like this (thanks Wolfgang).
Image links to CDW product page.
Adobe next month will release Director 11, an update to its graphics assembly, that it hopes will lure game developers with its better 3D imaging.
Adobe is expected to detail the latest features of Director at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday.
Director 11 is used to build games, as well as graphics-rich presentations, and learning applications. It uses the Shockwave plug-in to render 3D graphics.
The latest version includes physics, or movement between images, using the Ageia PhysX engine and support for DirectX 9, which can take advantage of recent graphics cards.
It will make it easier for designers to create more realistic 3D images, such as colliding cars on a racing game, said Rick Jones, senior product marketing manager at Adobe. The inclusion of Flash Player 9 enables the inclusion of animations and slick graphics for things like game menus.
When Adobe releases Director 11 next month, the price will be $999, rather than $1,199, which is the cost of the current version. Upgrades are $299 and a new student edition is available for $99.
Source: 1, 2, 3
And from the Adobe Director support forums, skiplondon has posted the following, so be sure to get your questions to him:
We are out in San Francisco for the announcement of new version of Director which will be coming from Adobe tomorrow. We will be reporting on this and sitting down with all the people on the Adobe Director team.
If you would like to have me ask them any questions for you, please email me at director @ magicgate . com . You only have about 24 hours left to submit your questions. These will be aired on our next episode of the Director Podcast hopefully on Wednesday morning.
If you wish to hear older episodes of our show, you can go to http://director.magicgate.com
SKIP
Thanks for that Skip, I’ll be looking forward to the next Podcast!
February 18th, 2008
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