Shockwaves

Lucas Meijer is a talented shockwave developer and I don't want to hurt his feelings.
However ...
1) an experienced SW developer doesn't push over 50,000 polygons in a 3D world
2) the game physics is buggy
3) a SW game running at 7-10 FPS on a 2GHz processor & 64MB Vcard is not a good promotion for the upcoming Director 11

cheers

[editors note - just wanted to say that I was hesitant to post this without stating that we specifically asked Lucas to shoot for the high end machine rather than the low. While this game will of course play as a Shockwave game online, it had to go head to head with games on the GDC floor, so we felt it was important to show how much Director can do, rather than over-optimize for browser playback. I would also add that performance on your system likely has a lot more to do with an underperforming graphics card than your cpu. (64 MB is really not a reasonable game card in 2008, I'd put the gamers range at 128-512 with 256 the norm.) I saw the game on a bunch of relatively normal PC's including my 3 year old Dell laptop and it ran at about 30-40 fps with solid physics and gorgeous graphics. I would guess that on lower end graphics cards or built-ins, it wouldn't do as well.]

We published also an article in Spanish

http://www.exelweiss.com/blog/387/adobe-director-11-lista-oficial-de-nuevas-caracteristicas/

Hi,
I want to ask for clarification about AS2 vs. AS3 support in Director 11. The Adobe Director web page indicates AS2 support, while the Director data sheet (Director podcast site) mentions AS3 support (twice). I've read in the forums from an unofficial source that AS3 support is being worked on and will be provided in a later update. Can you provide any "official" clarity with respect to this facet of Director 11? I've done some Flash work using Director MX 2004 as a desktop projector, and I'd love to continue using it as such with my AS3 classes. Not to mention being able to talk to AIR apps, etc. That would be real dream-come-true stuff for me. Thank you.

[editor's notes: The answer here is a bit convoluted so bear with me. Director 11 supports Flash version 9.0.28 - which is the version of the last plugin - not to be confused with the last authoring version. This is pretty typical, as it takes us a while to integrate the latest versions - for example when the last update came out it was for the Flash 8 plugin. So that means that all things Flash 8 should work well, but some of the most recent Flash support - the components that use the parameterized animation abilities are not yet supported. Now we know that there is an ongoing committment to support for Flash compatiblity, but Adobe does not as a rule make statements about future releases and particularly about the timeframe of future releases. So while it is certainly reasonable to expect that future releases will include increased Flash support and interoperability, there is not likely to be any official statement about that. I hope that helps explain some. Historically Flash xtra support has come both in the form of upgrades, and in the form of interim releases.]

This is all really exciting but for one thing: AS3 support. In my opinion this is a must-have. I presume that the Director team is working on it, but it sure would be nice to have an idea when to expect AS3 support.

Cool! How long did the demo game take to produce up to that point?

[editors comment: I think Lucas and his team worked on the game for about 6 weeks as far as i recall. Perhaps he'll post a comment to elaborate.]

This is all great and all, but my biggest question here is when is a native intel shockwave port going to be available? Running this kind of game on an intel mac under rosetta would be like running in front of a truck, waiting to be hit...

[editors note: March 25 is the announced date for Shockwave 11 and Director 11. You should be able to download both then.]

So what are the odds of simple Flex apps working with D11? Nil?

Great to see the assortment of press reaction. Anyone else have a chuckle over the utter lack of technical understanding by these so-called IT writers?

"revamped to let programmers write code in any language" [huh?]

"Ageia PhysX software engine gives video three-dimensional playback" [wtf?]

"It uses the Shockwave plug-in to render 3D graphics" [sort of...]

"On Sunday, it released an upgrade to Director 11" [no its not quite released yet!]

"Director 11 can work with the ShockWave Player for developing content for desktops" [uh, no...]

I could go on...