Shockwaves

Recent posts to the various Director mailing lists - asked the question what on earth is error -26? The error from the Ageia engine indicates that Creating a convex/concave rigidbody failed. Its thrown by the Ageia PhysX xtra - but when you look at the physics error codes - no such error is listed. So I did some digging and found that there are a handful of errors that didn't make it into the docs for D11. I'm positing them here so you all can benefit from the added insight.

These are the missing errors.
-7: These properties are not available
-10: Physics World is not valid
-13: Physics World is not valid
-26: Creating a convex/concave rigidbody failed

Continue reading "Expanded PhysX Error list " »

Posted by Allen Partridge at 09:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well its been chaos for me the past couple of weeks as Director 11 hit the shelves and people finally got a chance to see the application running natively on Mactel computers and Vista. (Believe it or not I'm equally swamped with work on D-Next and have been answering literally hundreds of emails daily - working with the tech support team and continuing work on PR - so it's been a wild ride lately.)

I wanted to post tho as there have been many request for a more detailed list of the many legacy bugs that were adresseed in D11 and I wanted to share them here. Click the extended entry to see the list - enjoy!

There is a technote of these coming - and they aren't the only fixes - but i know it helps to know what got cleaned up, so here's the hot list of the biggest ones.

Continue reading "Director 11 Released!" »

Posted by Allen Partridge at 09:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just heard from Dean Utian who has launched a new website http://www.deansdirectortutorials.com/ The site leverages years of Dean's collected knowledge on Director and features a host of very valuable tutorials along with really useful links from around the web. Dean has collected an amazing array of information that Director/Shockwave developers from beginning to advanced will find terrifically useful.

It's a definite first stop when you're looking for anything from a how-to tutorial to that link you can't remember how to find. Extremely well organized and thorough, it is a great collection of all things Director and sure to be a hit. Thanks Dean as always, your contributions to the community are worthy of praise indeed.

Posted by Allen Partridge at 11:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Well it's official, on Tuesday, Feb. 19 at GDC, Director 11 was announced. The announcement featured a demo of a really unbelievably cool game by Lucas Meijer and the Artplant team that features BMX Bike racing across a series of terrains. The new physics look good and the graphics in the game are especially nice.

The news was pretty extensively covered. I've included links to the various articles and blogs below.

Continue reading "GDC and the Director Announcement" »

Posted by Allen Partridge at 09:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

I'm back in San Francisco, and thrilled to find that the Director Podcast is in fact back. Skip emailed me to tell me that there had been over 1400 downloads in the first 24 hours. Honestly, how many software packages have theme songs and podcasts?

http://www.magicgate.com/podcast/director/

Rumors are swimming about Director. I heard whispers all over the plane. One kid ran up to me pointing and shouting 'Look mommy its that Director Preacher!' Needless to say I was totally flattered. After I slipped the kid a 20 I sat down to watch Wired Science on my iPhone. That's right, I did it. I bought the iPhone. I hate to admit it, but I haven't been happier with a tech-purchase since my blue clamshell ibook. Man I loved that thing. That was the first Mac I ran D8.5 on. You may bow your head in reverence when I mention 8.5.

Continue reading "The Director Podcast, iPhones, and Air" »

Posted by Allen Partridge at 07:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)