As reported on Direct-L, there have been two sightings of Director 11.5 which is now available for pre-ordering.
On Directorforum you can see a link that shows a release date of March 22, 2009, and on Amazon it shows April 4, 2009.
Seems as if Director has nine lives. Or maybe more than eleven and a half 🙂
Image from Amazon
3 comments February 16th, 2009
There was a discussion on Direct-L last week about books that are good when trying to learn Flash (and in particular AS3). Several nice ones were mentioned.
I picked up ActionScript 3.0 Game Programming University the other day and am starting to work my way through it. I feel that learning a new language by programming simple games is a good idea, since you always have a true goal in mind. Even better, a bit of physics gets thrown in so that aliens can behave in a realistic fashion when moving through varying gravitational fields 🙂
The book was written by Gary Rosenzweig, who many might know from years on various Director lists. Be sure to drop by the site that goes along with book called FlashGameU.
4 comments February 3rd, 2009
People occasionally have questions when trying to find a ceiling or floor function in the Lingo library so I figured I’d post it here for future googlers.
Lingo didn’t include these two math functions, but you can write your own functions and keep them in your personal library of goodies.
on floor aFloat return integer(aFloat) - (aFloat < integer(aFloat)) end on ceil aFloat return integer(aFloat) + (aFloat > integer(aFloat)) end
If you are working with Javascript these functions are built in:
Math.ceil(aFloat); Math.floor(aFloat);
2 comments February 3rd, 2009
I had this comment come in the other day but figured I’d make it a post since this is a big issue that has been popping up for years at my workplace.
Is there anybody who can tell me how to fix shockwave 11 it says it is installed, however it is not on my program list and when I try to play games that require it, it pops up saying 1 or more shockwave files are missing! Is there anyone out there that actually knows how to fix this! I am beginning to hate windows vista!
thank you
Lori
I can’t say much about Vista, and I could go in to great detail about what could be happening in some cases, but the short answer is this: download the Shockwave uninstaller, run it on your computer, and then download the FULL INSTALLER and not the default “slim” installer.
If that does not work, then it could be due to the content you are viewing. Some people use Xtras in the content, and many of those Xtras have not been updated to work with Shockwave 11.
In any event, running the uninstaller, followed by a full installation solves this sort of problem for the vast number of users that have issues like the one you described. Hope that helps out.
Note: On the Mac version the uninstaller is bundled with the installer, but for Windows you’ll have to download the uninstaller separately.
Add comment January 15th, 2009
I’ve been rather silent on the web lately, but I’m back. Where have I been? Here is the quick story…just for fun 🙂
In November the site got hacked a bit. That caused a bit of downtime. In mid-November my site went down for almost two weeks when I was on the road at MAX. I’d been hosting the site in my house on a Mac Mini, but my internet provider decided to make a change to my DSL-modem at a very bad time. The good side is that I moved the site to a real provider so I don’t have to worry when the power goes out here in town (which happens a lot!).
As December rolled around life in my office was a bit stressful. We had a deadline that had to get done. I started dreaming about Lingo. Since I hadn’t taken a day off all year I was supposed to be done as of December 1, but I got called in for one bonus week to do one last Gizmo. It was close, but it got done.
A day later I headed off to Minneapolis to teach an Introduction to Director course (see…Director isn’t dead!) for a week. I got to enjoy a snowstorm that was going on the night I got in to town, and then some good sub-zero weather. I really loved the skywalk system they had in the downtown area. I also enjoyed getting a chance to teach, since I hadn’t done that in a few years.
After a week in Minneapolis I headed off to Boulder, Colorado. I was housesitting and got to take care of a few dogs, a few cats, and a few plants. Relaxing. Got to enjoy a few good hikes in the mountains, and a few good evenings at the local pubs.
While out at MAX I bought an iPhone. While in Minneapolis and in Boulder I found myself using various features constantly. I can’t believe I lived so long without buying one, and can’t picture not having one ever again. I barely use the actual “phone” part of the device, but the rest makes it worth it.
Some of the apps are amazing. I downloaded the iPhone SDK the other day and installed it. I wonder how long it takes to create a simple app in my spare moments…guess I’ll find out in the next few months.
Vacation is now over. I’m back at work. This year I’ll be learning far more Flash, still doing lots in Director, and maybe creating something for the iPhone. I’m also waiting for Adobe CS4 to show up in my office. Gotta love new toys at the start of the year. And with the new year, it is time to get this site back in shape after the hack/downtime. Stay tuned…
Director @ Night is back from vacation 🙂
2 comments January 13th, 2009
Sorry for the site being down for so long. Right when I left for Adobe MAX my host made some changes…and things got messed up. But we are both back. More news in the next few days, and I have to start digging around with my new host to see if anything got broken.
Add comment November 22nd, 2008
An updated version of Shockwave was posted last week, and a hotfix for Director will be posted early this week.
Release Notes for Shockwave 11.0.3.470.
Release Notes for Shockwave 11.0.3.470
Shockwave build number: 11.0.3.470
1) Kerning was not available in Director 11.
Kerning is implemented for the font types supported by Director 11.
2) There were additional spaces at the end of the line when text was justified.
Bug is fixed. Justification of text correctly takes into account spaces at the end of the line.
3) When the sprite width was greater than 1536 pixels, text was not rendered properly. A black patch appeared in the text window\text sprite in some cases.
This issue is fixed for text sprites whose width and the height is greater than 1536 pixels.
4) Director used to crash when the following fonts were applied to the text sprite. (Mac OS 10.5)
This issue has been fixed.
5) Certain custom icons appeared fuzzy on the projector.
This issue has been fixed.
6) Changes to the value for friction and restitution of rigid bodies after collision did not have any effect on the Physics World.
This issue has been fixed.
7) When force was applied to a rigid body in a Physics World, a spin was observed.
This is because the rigid body always has an affinity towards the world axis.
A new rigid body property, called axisAffinity, has been added. The value of the axisAffinity property is true by default. The affinity towards the world axis is compensated by setting the property to false. When you set the property to false, the spin is not observed.
The computations are more when axisAffinity is false; set the property to false only when required.
Sample code snippet
aball = pDynamiks.createRigidBody(ball.name,ball.name,#sphere,#dynamic)
aball.mass=1000
aball.sleepThreshold = 100
aball.friction= 1
aball.restitution = 0
aball.axisAffinity = false
8 ) The Maintain Proportion option in the Sprite’s scale dialog box, and Transform bitmap dialog box, did not produce the required results in Director on a MAC 10.4 G5 machine.
This issue has been fixed for both the dialog boxes.
9) Externally linked Scripts got deleted when external files had MAC line ending characters.
This problem occurred when a text file created on MAC with MAC line endings was imported to a Windows machine and saved. This issue has been fixed.
10) On a computer running on Windows Vista, Flash and Shockwave content on the same HTML page were not able to communicate.
This issue has been fixed.
11) The value of timestep and substep was not ignored in the Automatic time step mode while initializing the Physics body.
Automatic time step is supposed to take the elapsed time for advancing the Physics World simulation. This was not working properly for all values of time step.
12) Physics Xtra throws an error when the value for the timestep and substep parameters is zero in the Automatic time step mode.
This is a valid value for automatic time step and no error is thrown when you specify a value of zero. However, zero values for timestep and substep are invalid for other modes and the error will be shown.
13) Memory leak when models were cloned using cloneModelFromCastMember() and resetworld()
Models and texture files were not cleaned as intended when cloneModelFromCastMember() and resetworld() were used. This resulted in a small memory leak.
14) Downloading a new version of the custom Xtra did not replace the previous version after the user closed the browser
When a user plays a Shockwave movie that requires the latest version of a custom Xtra, the custom Xtra is downloaded to the user’s computer in the same location as the previous version of the Xtra. The new Xtra is placed in a folder named New. This happens only when a previous version of the custom Xtra exists on the computer.
When the user closes the browser, the new version should replace the previous custom Xtra and the “New†folder should get deleted. This was not happening and has been fixed now.
The new custom Xtra replaces the previous version when:
Feature Enhancement
rayCastAll method in Physics(Dynamiks xtra) takes an optional parameter for sorting the returned list.
Usage
<list> world.rayCastAll(vector origin,vector direction,[[#sorted:#distance]])
Description
This method returns references of all the rigid bodies or terrains that are found along the ray from the specified origin and specified direction. The method also returns the point of contact, contact normal, and the distance from the origin of the ray.
Parameters
parameter Description
Origin Required. Vector that specifies the origin of the raycast direction Required. Vector that specifies the direction of the raycast.
[#sorted:#distance] Optional list. Specifies that the returned list should be sorted on distance
Return parameter
This method returns a list containing a list having the following information:
Example
â€â€Lingo Syntax
lstraycast = member(“PhysicsWorld”).rayCastAll (vector(10,0,0),vector(0,0,1))
â€â€Returns an unsorted list containing the above parameters
put lstraycast
lstraycast = member(“PhysicsWorld”).rayCastAll (vector(10,0,0),vector(0,0,1),[#sorted:#distance])
â€â€Returns an sorted list containing the above parameters
put lstraycast
//JavaScript Syntax
var lstraycast = member(“PhysicsWorld”).rayCastAll (vector(10,0,0),vector(0,0,1));
â€â€Returns a unsorted list containing the above parameters
put(lstraycast);
lstraycast = member(“PhysicsWorld”).rayCastAll (vector(10,0,0),vector(0,0,1),
propList(symbol(“sorted”),symbol(“distance”)));
//Returns a sorted list containing the above parameters
put(lstraycast);
1 comment November 10th, 2008
The sixth online meeting will take place this morning at 10am. More info can be found here.
I have to go vote (the American thing to do today), so I might be late depending on lines.
The Meeting URL:
http://experts.na3.acrobat.com/directorforum
The meeting room will be open 1 hour before the actual meeting starts.
So feel free to join early and chat with others.
The Time Zones:
Here is a time zone page.
The Topic:
Shockwave3D & Flash 10 3D with Colin Holgate
Colin will show us how to create 3D content with Director & Shockwave3D. He will also give us an introduction to Flash 10 3D and compare it to Shockwave3D. Finally we will announce another new (hopefully exciting) initiative by Directorforum.
Add comment November 4th, 2008
A lot of Director developers do work for museums ranging from creating kiosks to designing programs that would allow you to control robots that dig around in a big pile of sand (a virtual Mars).
When I lived in Michigan I would occasionally help out at COSI Science Museum in Toledo. It was always great to see kids learning a wealth of science in a true hands-on fashion. Unfortunately, COSI had to close its doors to the public at the end of 2007.
They are currently trying to get a levy passed in Toledo (Lucas County) this November so that the museum can be reopened. A number of people have been working nonstop for the past year in this effort. If you live in the area I hope you will help out and Keep COSI going with your vote.
Add comment October 5th, 2008
The 5th Director Live Online meeting will be taking place on Tuesday September 23, 2008 at 10am EST. If you have time, be sure to participate. I’ll be there for part of it… but have to attend some other meetings 🙁
For more information (including the URL to the meeting) you can view this post.
Topics include:
Director Hotfix 3 will most likely be the main topic and Allen Partridge will update us on what’s happening, what will be fixed and when it will be released.
We will then have another look at the Directorforum Collaboration Wiki, where I’ve seen quite a bit of activity over the past 2.5 weeks.
Also, I will try to get you guys updated on what Adobe CS4 will be like. Eventually September 23rd is the day, Adobe will announce CS4 and will share info on what’s new. And we will be among the first to share this info publicly.
If anyone of you guys wants to present something (an interesting current or past project, or maybe a short Director related workshop) please don’t hesitate to drop me a line and we’ll make it happen. Also if you have specific topics to be covered in a future Director Live Online Meeting, just tell me and we’ll see how we can do it.
Again, these Director Live Online Meetings are a community effort and everybody can actively participate and contribute.
Add comment September 22nd, 2008
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