FYI, Director lives: Intel-native in less than a year

I don't consider Director and Unity to be direct competitors (I love Director but never touch the 3D stuff), and I know there are other Director folks here, so I thought I'd share the official news from Adobe:

http://www.digitalproducer.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=53027

* Director will live on!

* Next version with new features in first half of 2007.

* Intel-native on Macs, and can build apps for Vista too.

I'm glad--I was getting worried there! I'll be doing a lot more with Unity now, but Shockwave still has a place in my arsenal.

 

I thought ClockWork started out as a Director 3D game for you? Anyway, it's great that Director isn't going away. Say what you will about the 3D portion of it (maybe Adobe will finally update it now), but it is certainly still a unique tool for authoring a wide range of interactive and non-interactive media.

 

It was in Director, but not true 3D. Ugly screenshot here http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=2414

It did have the "pits" (well, one pit) and the ball would react to that kind of terrain (via my own physics system that read force data from a kind of normal map stored in an image)--but it was pseudo-3D. All just sprites.

 

Aargh, I keep hitting "Edit" instead of "Quote" for people's posts. Kinda scary that I can edit other people's posts on here now... don't get on my bad side or I'll make you say some ridiculous stuff :wink:

The fact that you ported over a 2D sprite game with a lot of the code to a 3D engine in a number of weeks is great. They should put you up on the profiles page. It would be a good testament to Unity's flexibility.

 

Well... I ported SOME code, but most of it I just threw away because it wasn't needed I invented a lot of wheels (no pun intended) in Director that were just needless in Unity. Starting with, oh, little things like physics!

I had JUST finished a couple weeks of heavy coding on the Director version and then immediately scrapped it and jumped into Unity to start fresh. I don't know what got into me. The Director version did work. The switch was well worth it though! And it didn't take "a number of weeks..." it took A WEEK Much to my surprise.

 

Just be careful your Unity version doesn't spiral out of control and wind up being an MMORPG or something of similar scope. Too easy to happen...

(In other words... when can I play the final version! )

-Jon

 

Yes--the game will soon enter the phase of just level-building, not adding features, so I can easily say "enough is enough" when I have to

 

I must say that it sounds more like Adobe decided that, yes, it could probably keep milking the Director cash cow for a bit longer rather than -- oh yeah, this is an exciting product we're going to keep working on.

Basically -- they're going to recompile it for Intel on Macs... Make some minor tweaks, and sell it as a $500 upgrade to existing users. Great.

 

I think you may be assuming some things

It's not just a recompile for Intel. Because:

* It will be a new release for Windows also, not just Mac.

* They said they will add new features--to both niche areas like 3D and the general core functionality.

Now, they COULD do the worst, but I see no reason to assume it must be the case. (But even if it is, I can appreciate that porting to a new architecture costs a lot, and they have to demand payment for the privilege. I'm just glad Director and upgrades have gotten so much cheaper than the "old days" when you'd have to buy a license for both platforms at full price! Yikes!)

 

No, I think you're engaging in wishful thinking after reading what seems like a PR puff piece. The interviewer (who asked nothing but "Dorothy Dix" questions are we call them in Australia) said that in the past Macromedia didn't seem to know who its customers were or have a product focus, and the response is (to paraphrase) "we'll try to sell to the following four or five markets" of which 3D/games was one. (Which seems to indicate that they still don't know who their market is.) He didn't promise any new features -- just new marketing initiatives. (Given that Director was not mentioned during the entire Adobe merger, anything is an improvement.)

I googled Kevin Schmidt and found a bunch of "Director is awesome" puff pieces all over the place. He's not actually a PR flak, but he's definitely a fanboi -- lately gushing over MX 2004 like it was some kind of holy grail.

A $400 upgrade for negligible improvements is still pretty nasty. But yes, it's an improvement. Does one license let you debug on both platforms, though? (I refused to upgrade to MX2004.)

 

I'll venture to guess that Director has not served your business as well as it has served mine I found the last upgrade well worth my $400. It has paid for itself many times over.

If by "fluff" you mean that Adobe could back out of adding new features--I agree. They've hinted rather than promised, and this was an official announcement lacking in specifics. They could back away from making subtantive advances. I'm not denying that the worst could happen, I'm simply not assuming it will happen.

I'll certainly be sorry if your predictions are true, but I won't be sorry to see an excellent tool live on for at least one more iteration--which was previously a question mark. People who don't need a new version of Director don't have to buy it--but for some of us, this is excellent news More detailed news would be even more welcome of course!

To answer your question: MX 2004 lets you author on one platform, deploy to two (well, three if you count Classic).

 

If you can read between the lines than you'll notice that they will allow you to upgrade the first time for the last three versions instead of two like it was common, which means 8.5 (which introduced ssw3d, havok, ...).
They also made up their minds where they wanna see their product used (amongst others casual games and 3d simulations) and it's quite silent since some time.
This and the markets situation and how Thomas acts leads for me to the conclusion that there will be a sw3d update.
Go through the forums carefully and you will get some idea what they are after...

@Morgan
Releasing for different platforms isn't as smooth as i could be. If releasing stuff which doesnt require third party XTRAs it's easy but it's getting quite on your nerves if you wanna release stuff which uses third party XTRAs as you have to provide the platform depending versions on your own. This is quite annoying if you don't have both systems for instance...

 

Oh and Adobe has a long history of revving apps for compatibility with the latest Mac OS and charging Windows users for the parallel upgrade -- Photoshop 7 for example.

Authoring on one platform and deploying to two has, in practice, been possible since Director 4 (you build a stub on a friend's copy of Director and you're done). If you need to do any real debugging, you always need Director for both platforms.

The only key feature of Director MX 2004 that I can see paying dividents is DVD video support, which has been available via a third party Xtra (cheaper than the MX->2004 upgrade) since ... oh ... v6.

And -- reading between lines to look for implied new features is a bad idea. If they were going to add significant new features, you wouldn't need to read between any lines.

 

>>>
Oh and Adobe has a long history of revving apps for compatibility with the latest Mac OS and charging Windows users for the parallel upgrade -- Photoshop 7 for example.
<<<

And this is why i'm so excited about companies like propellerhead, blitz, luxology,... You pay once and get all the os versions. They don't tie you to a platform.

>>>
Authoring on one platform and deploying to two has, in practice, been possible since Director 4 (you build a stub on a friend's copy of Director and you're done). If you need to do any real debugging, you always need Director for both platforms.
<<<

Well, stubs are the all time problem, aren't they?! How many discussion have been around with this... ;O)
If you wanna include XTRAs for osx on a win machine for instance you'll have to convert them to be useable for building an osx version.
Debugging isn't so much the problem. It's more that tiny things work differently on osx and win, take for instance those renderissues with sw3d...

>>>
And -- reading between lines to look for implied new features is a bad idea. If they were going to add significant new features, you wouldn't need to read between any lines.
<<<

Let's wait and see...

 

I'm glad I don't share your certainty, but I'm also glad I won't be asked to hand over money until details are released

 

None of your buisness as you're not a sw3d user! ;O)

 

Just think of it, come mid-2007 we might actually have two great authoring environment choices for creating 3D games: Unity and Director.

What an awesome problem for us to have!

 

Altough I plan to keep using Director, I may well never touch SW3D. The barriers are just too high, not worth my time now that I have Unity. But you never know what may change. I could fit two tools in my arsenal if I had to

 

What barriers are you talking about? The ones in your mind? Sorry but you've said that you've never used sw3d nor have you any idea what's coming up which makes your statement rather pointless as you probably know on your own...

@marty
Do you really think that we will use two tools at the same time? For offline okay but for online i somehow don't see this working out due to the plugin-dilemma unless they would serve very different fields or there would be a great difference in quality.
Using flash for 2d work and using another engine for 3d work is okay but using different tools alone for the 3d online aspect beside of using other engines for offline work. How many are going to do this? Buying different tools, getting into these, beeing able to work with, paying the updates, learning new stuff and so on. I doubt that it will be this many.

 

Good points, Taumel!

But you have to admit, it would be nice for all of us to have two great 3D authoring products competing with each other in the market - even if you only use one of them.

 

Hi Marty,

it's a two sided sword. Certainly it's nice to have competition here after so many years from a customers point of view with all the benefits we know from such situtations: cheaper prices, faster developments (or development at all if looking at Adobe) and so on.

On the other side the cake isn't getting bigger just because there are more tools around so this also splits up the market and so the returns for the products. It really depends on the specific niche and the product if it's better to have one product driving at full speed or more products driving slower. Flash isn't doing this badly without any competiton since years and no one questions the plugin because it's so widely common...

I would be much more happier with "the product" which does it all right than more products where one lacks in area a) whilst the other one lacks in the field b) and so on. But it's not going to happen soon, right?! :O) It's a little bit like with those browsers you had to support some years ago and which the IE wipped away time after time. You get the evil monoculture but it also makes your life much more easier...

Well, like those evil capitalists say "the market controls itself" no matter how it will turn out, it will be good, right?! ;O) *hommm*

 

As always, you've hit it right on the head, Taumel.

I guess the best thing to do right now to make the best games that we can with the best best software we can get our hands on - all the while watching the industry.

Right now, I'm using/loving Unity, but part of me will always keep hoping/praying for Director.

 

Among others

The barriers for me are entry barriers, although even after that curve, I know SW3D also missing some features Unity has. I have played with SW3D and couldn't get into it. It wasn't fun or productive for me. So I've used it privately--a little--but never commercially. Much like one person might get value from one 3D modeling app, while another finds they're only productive in another app. I won't criticize you if you use SW3D, I'm merely saying my interest in Director lies elsewhere. Thanks, in large part, to Unity.

Now, Director + QuickTime VR, that I DO like I've given QTVR FPS-style controls, which makes it much nicer than the drunken swaying of QTVR's normal control system. I've also implemented 3D audio in QTVR via Director. And photographic (or high-end-pre-rendered) panos will always have their uses. (I'll be very tempted to to try a cubemap in Unity for delivery though, next time a client asks for QTVR.)

 

Oohh.. isn't that like telling your girlfriend that you still are in love with you ex?

 

That's funny!

Actualy though, it's more like I'm hoping that my ex's new boyfriend (Adobe) takes better care of her than Macromedia did.

 

Which seems to happen... ;O)

@Morgan
Hmmm i didn't found it hard to get into even more after i got 3dpi...