Shockwave.ini on OSX
Every now and then (ok…twice in the past three years) I’ve had a bug that ONLY shows up in Shockwave and not in authoring or projector mode. These are the most frustrating, since it is a bit harder to debug things. One of the toughest parts is that when an error pops up, this is what it looks like.
Not very useful.
Is there a way to get more information? Yes, but finding the answer has gotten harder. One answer is the shockwave.ini file (there are other debug methods for shockwave, but nothing here today). If you do a search for this you will find a bit about this on the web. Most items refer to Windows and not OSX. If you dig around on the Adobe site you will find this technote that discusses making changes to the director.ini file for debugging a projector. It then says you can do this with Shockwave, but trying to find out where to put that file seems to be missing from the Adobe site (even a search for shockwave.ini does not seem to provide an answer, although more can be found out about the Director.ini file).
Are you starting to wonder where this file should go? Lets get started. Go to this location on your computer (note: This is not in your user folder, it is the top level library folder):
/Library/Application Support/Macromedia/Shockwave 10/
You will then see a file called a Shockwave.bundle. Control-click on that bundle and select “Show Package Contents” from the list of options.
You will then be inside the Contents folder. Inside that is a folder called MacOS. That is where the shockave.ini* file will need to sit with the line DisplayFullLingoErrorText=1 placed in it.
You will then get errors when running in Shockwave that are a bit easier to deal with. Guess I was missing a handler that would help me find an answer (ugh..such a bad joke..it even hurts me).
When the next version of Shockwave gets released I have a feeling it will no longer go in a Macromedia folder, so I guess I’ll have to dig around to find yet another place to put my shockwave.ini file.
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*It is best to make a copy of the director.ini file and rename it shockwave.ini (for Director 10). The director.ini file is located in the Director/Configuration folder (typically /Applications/Macromedia Director/Configuration/director.ini). You can find more info about that file in Adobe Technote 3108.
4 comments April 1st, 2007