I’ve been rather quiet lately. My spare hours have been working on recovering from an attack of spambots attacking this site, and others. My poor little Mac Mini hosts a dozen sites while holding a martini glass for any visitors that may drop by. I’ve ignored security for the past N (where N > 10) on my blogs, but that has rapidly become a thing of the past. Hopefully I’m back up and running now, preferably without scissors 🙂
While I’ve been quiet I also noticed how quiet it was on the MXNA (Macromedia XML News Aggregator). They had some issues with their server, but the site is back up with a new and improved name of Adobe Feeds. Thanks to all of those at Adobe for the feeds. The site sure is faster than it used to be! Guess they now have a bit of power behind it. I know I’ll feel better now that I can browse through it in the morning.
Stay away hackbots…stay away…please!
May 6th, 2008
An updated version of Director 11 was released over the weekend for Mac users:
This is a Mac only update that addresses the following issues:
- Referencing a cast member fails when the Cast name has special characters like
!, @, #, $, %, ^, &, *, (, ), _, +, |, },etc
- Shockwave Audio (SWA) files were not streamed properly
- Field component performance is very slow on MAC
For detailed installation instructions and files changed, please see the readme.txt file.
You can download this update on the Director downloads page.
April 28th, 2008
For the developers out there that like to get a slightly more descriptive error message in their Shockwave-based content you need to have a Shockwave.ini file placed in your shockwave folder. This prior post talked about where you should put it for Shockwave 10 on OSX.
With Shockwave 11 you should navigate to your /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Shockwave 11/ folder. There you will see the DirectorShockwave.bundle. Control-click (right-click) on that bundle and choose “Show contents.” Inside that sits the Plugin.framework folder.
Place the Shockwave.ini in that folder (you will probably have to enter your password at that time) with this text in it.
[Lingo]
DisplayFullLingoErrorText=1
That usually makes debugging just a bit easier 🙂
Note: I haven’t yet looked in to the location for Windows. If anyone knows feel free to comment. I’m sure I’ll need to look for it one of these days.
April 24th, 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
Welcome to WordPress…yet again. I made quite a few behind the scene changes. Thanks to those that pointed out some things wrong on the site. I still have some changes to make, but I think I have things stabilized.
April 22nd, 2008
I’ll be honest, I still haven’t had time to play with Dir 11. Drudge work lately has been leaving me so tired when I get home that I just want to veg out, run, or drink — while avoiding computers. But while browsing around on Adobe.com and grabbing Lightroom 2.0 beta I noticed new stuff kicking around for Director.
If you want a light read drop by and download the 1245 page Director 11 Scripting Reference. That sure is a lot of lingo.
With that PDF opened I noticed the manual was authored in FrameMaker. I’m still so sad that they ditched the Mac version of that program. Maybe “a tad pissed” is more appropriate than sad. I’ve never gotten over that one…even Steve Jobs was peeved, since all Apple manuals used to be done in FrameMaker. [OK…enough of my side rant.]
To go along with installation problems that were initially reported, Adobe has released a number of technotes related to installation and computer lock up. Far more info on the Director Support Center.
April 16th, 2008
Here are a few thoughts from week 1 of the brand new Director 11. Most thoughts are from mailing lists (so I guess I can’t really call them mine)…I’ve been so busy this and last week I haven’t had time to think, and I’ve barely had time to play with it.
First, let me just say I’m very happy that Adobe is at least putting one foot forward by getting this running on MacIntel. It really would have been a sign of sure death if they’d gone with the Windows only approach. Director isn’t quite dead yet (as some of us have been saying for 5 to 8 years).
In the few minutes I’ve played with it I’ve found two “quirks.” Not sure that is so good.
The script browser is great, but as soon as I saw it I wanted more functionality. Why can’t I drag a behavior from it on to a sprite in the stage/score? Why is the only option when right/control clicking on a script icon delete? Why can’t I get a nice view of my cast like that where I could create folders and “group” things in to them (or just allow like media to show up in folders like that). This Director is like an iPhone. I see it, love the features, but I want far more.
On the Shockwave side, it took until Thursday evening (four days after release), but Adobe finally changed their redirect page that was preventing MacIntel users from grabbing Shockwave 11. As soon as they changed that our company changed ours as well. It took two years more than it should have, but Shockwave now runs on my gorgeous MacIntel at home.
Beatles are playing in the coffee shop I’m in right now. With the unbelievable amount of Apple/American Idol promotion, combined with two weeks where the Idolites were forced to destroy Beatles songs, you’d think Apple would have used all that to announce Beatles on iTunes. Alas, we’ve been waiting for that longer than Shockwave for MacIntel. [Note: this is not Director related, but hey…popped in to my mind.]
OK…now on to mailing list stuff.
The Xtra Development Kit and Xtra Packaging Kit (XDK/XPK) are available for download here.
A wealth of discussion over this release causing depression among developers. Others are happy that Director is finally moving forward once again. Future versions of Director continue to get mentioned by Allen P.
A very long post by Lutz W. on Direct-L did real world comparisons between Ageia Physics Xtra and the Havok Xtra. Ageia did rather well in some respects, needs work on other parts. It was a great read.
Adobe is trying to get the XDK mailing list reinstated. It died at some point during the Macromedia purchase. If you want to be on this list be sure to drop Allen P. a message.
Looking around for Xtras…these two sites are being updated: Dean’s Xtra Page and Mile High Table ‘o Products. Many updated Xtras were posted by Tabuleiro.
Good Things
MacIntel Director and Shockwave are here!!!!!!
Many from the Adobe Director engineering team are on the mailing lists trying to find out more about bugs.
Lots of Xtras have been updated. Other updates are on the way.
Bad Things
No publicity at all on the front page of the Adobe Site. And SW never seems worthy of a full icon. This still doesn’t seem to represent full blown support from Adobe.
Possible bugs I need to read more about: charPosToLoc, getNetText with unicode.
Text display of anti-aliasing/kerning seems to have a wealth of issues.
The documentation on new features is rather limited at this point. I think I caught a sentence that Adobe is working on getting together lots of sample stuff for a DVD (not positive where I saw that).
Most everything involved in text display/rendering is slow. In the message window if you
put the xtraList
it is very slow, but if you use
put string(the xtraList)
it is vastly faster. Putting strings is always faster in the message window. This issue is now being looked in to by Adobe.
Some Xtras will not be updated. Adobe is actually debating if they want to acquire some and include them with Director.
The GUI associated with the program has become so confusing. The first thing I do is choose the Window > Panel Sets > Director 8 option. A tremendous overhaul is needed.
March 31st, 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
I dropped TUAW a line about Shockwave the day it came out. They picked up on the story and made a post about it.
Interesting comments rolling in.
March 29th, 2008
OK. Director 11 is here. I found my first bug in about five minutes of playing. Is this a quirk, bug, or “feature?” Guess that is up to interpretation. Anyway…I put a Flash Component Button on the stage. I gave the sprite a name in the Property Inspector window. In a startMovie handler I used:
sprite("aName").label = "Some text"
This used to work in startMovie, but no longer does. It also used to work in a prepareFrame in frame 1 (which occurs before startMovie). This now seems to consistently fail in both Shockwave and Authoring on MacIntel and PPCs.
Bug, feature, or quirk. Hard to say. I guess it might be good to start getting all of these bugs in one place. Suggestions? I think DOUG might have a wiki up, or maybe Dean’s new site, or Director Quirk List…will have to look around when I get a few spare moments. Massive deadline this week…and lots of QA to do with the new Shockwave.
March 25th, 2008
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