What will happen if I decide to make some changes to my custom xtra?

How can I update the custom xtra that got downloaded to thousands of people’s application data folder automatically without affecting the user experience?

These are some common questions which we come across in a typical scenario. This article addresses these questions. We assume that the user is already familiar with the technique of packaging the xtras with a certificate and with the other steps necessary for download of the Xtras.

In order to enable auto-update of my xtra, I need to update the version of the new xtra.

For example, if presently, my movie understands 1.0.0 to be the version of Xtra X for the movie to play. I need to make sure that I have incremented my version to 1.0.1.

Why is this important? Because it is based on this that I am going to tell my player to check if the Xtra is updated and play the movie only after updating the xtra.
Once this is done, I need to do the following to tell the shochwave player that the new xtra should be used for playing the movie.

• Package the new xtra and host it in the required location.

• Copy the updated xtra to the xtras folder inside the application folder.

• Update the Xtrainfo.txt so that it points to the new location where the packaged are placed. If it is the same location as the previous one then this step can be skipped.

• Open my movie in Director.

• Go to Modify > Movies > Xtras

• Select the custom xtra from the list and uncheck and check the “Download if needed” option.

• Republish the movie to shockwave.

The last 2 steps are very important since it tells the player about the latest version of the xtra that is required for the movie to play.

In the Application Data folder, we will notice that another folder called “New” is created and this xtra is downloaded to this location and on close of the current shockwave session\launch of the next shockwave session the latest xtra will be copied to the original folder.

Auto-update of your xtra is done!!!

1. Security bug fixes.

2. While installing Shockwave on Windows 7, the IE security dialog appears multiple times and its addressed now.

3. Cross domain-Movie crashes when loadPolicyFile is called in preparemovie script.

4. Text-pointToItem of a newline in a text sprite causes the Movie to hang.

5.Text-”item..of” on strings having two item delimiters continuously returns incorrect results.

6. Cross domain- Multiple levels of cross domain policy not supported, and the movie fails silently.

7. Shockwave 3D- Need Hardware anti-aliasing of 3D sprites in Director

8. Shockwave- [Mac -Snowleopard] [64-bit] Playing a movie in 64-bit mode of safari should give appropriate error message rather than failing silently.

One of my favorite online light cycle racers (Cybermonkey’s SWRON) is still available on Cybermonkey.org .

Tron was a breakthrough film in the history of 3D computer graphics and animation. And the 1982, when the film was initially released was a jaw dropping year in the history of science fiction. I was 17 years old and preparing for my senior year in high school when that summer rained down science fiction masterpieces. Tron, ET, Blade Runner and of course the greatest Star Trek film of all time, The Wrath of Khan.

Tron was the vision of a zealous animator Steven Lisberger, whose small production company was known primarily for ‘Animalympics.’ In 1976 surrounded by ‘Pong’, Star Wars and the arcade game explosion is it any wonder that he was inspired to do such a film, but his vision was absolutely at the edge of the technical capacity of the day. In the end it would require cutting edge evolution from most of the major 3D special effects companies in the industry to realize Lisberger’s vision.

There is a solid documentary on the making of Tron on the 20th anniversary DVD if you want to get a deeper understanding of the players and process. One of the most compelling bits of evidence that it would even be possible to do the film was the now famous Triple i demo reel. Another player was Robert Abel and Associates. You can get a sense of their state of technology from this You Tube video of a 1980 AT&T ad.

At that time three computer engineers (Jamie Fenton, Marc Canter and Mark Pierce) were working together at Bally in Chicago. 18 months later the trio would found Macromind (later Macromedia) and create Macromind / Macromedia Director. I spoke to Jamie (via email) yesterday and learned that she’s hard at work inventing video and RAM analysis artware, and spoke to Marc a few months ago discovering that he’s very seriously embedded in the social networking space. Mark is running a mobile games company, Super Happy Fun Fun,today.

It would be more than a decade before Macromedia codenamed a project designed to bring 3D to the Internet in honor of this legendary science fiction classic, and ironically – the pair now stand to each see sequels synchronize. I couldn’t help but admire the universal synergy – and pay homage to Tron.

In a nutshell, the Shockwave update for a MS security issue came out last week. Users are encouraged to update immediately to eliminate their risk. The Flash update for the same issue is expected on July 30. Read the PSIRT announcement for more details on how to protect from Flash vulnerability in the interim.

The security fix for Shockwave was added to a regularly scheduled bug fix which always alert Shockwave / Director developers sniffed out immediately on release last Thursday. The bug fixes in the release are listed below.

• Bounding Sphere in Physics was not accurate when using a sphere proxy.
• (Bug Id: 2319573) Font Style not working properly
• GetPref() will also read Shockwave 10 preferences if the information is not available in Shockwave 11/11.5 preference.
• Memory leak in Physics for 6DOF joints(reported by Lutz).

Click the image to see the Trailer on Gametrailers.com

On the business side its been doing nearly 200k hits a day for the first month or so on the site – but the real news is on the gameplay and aesthetics side. You have to play this action packed racer to understand the amazing art form that is online 3D Racing games.

Racing games in general continue to dominate the gameplays at Shockwave.com and Burnin’ Rubber is evidence of intent to master the genre. This masterpiece combines high speed combat with projectiles of all sorts, with challenging tracks, convincing AI and insane performance.

The effects are solid and give you seamless integration of cinematic quality spectacle with non-stop escalating game play. It uses an effective system of stepped rewards and unlockable tracks to keep you engaged and replayable levels make for a great self-challenge model.

This one is a must play, must win, must make the leader board kind of experience. Developers should study it, and fans should find it addictive and compelling. Huge congrats to the guys at xForm. I can’t wait to see what’s next. It’s especially exciting for me to imagine, knowing the amazing work that engineering is doing as we speak on next generation web 3d.

I was gripped because I have always wanted to do or see a decent motocross solution – (I’m yawning from all those silly side scrolls of motocross) and figured it was totally ‘doable’ in Shockwave 3D. Silent Bay proves it can be done and it can be cool in this online offering. But as I was trolling the Shockwave.com site, another realization struck me – when I sorted the games by popularity.

14 of the top 20 Games on Shockwave.com right now, use Shockwave / Director for the delivery platform. 13 of those 14 are Shockwave 3D.

Certainly based on this random sample Shockwave 3D is leading the charge in online games. And it isn’t even just leading the 3D charge – its leading the race overall in this case. It will of course take a broader sample to determine if 3D games are leading 2D games in numbers of players, but I thought it was worth noting, as this particular instance seems to demonstrate a clear trend favoring both 3D games and Shockwave 3D as the delivery mechanism.

Some other interesting figures: if you add the number of game plays today for the Shockwave games, (569,062) there were more than half a million Shockwave game plays on this one site, considering only the top 20 games. The top 20 accounted for a total of 837,134 game plays. So Shockwave games were 67.9% of all plays in the top 20.

The remaining games in the top 20 break down into Flash, the PopCap engine and Java. In one case the game online is Flash, and offline is within the Director engine. (This is a common approach in the Casual downloadable arena.)

I’ll continue to explore this trend across other sites, and let you know how various sites compare. I think one early takeaway is that Shockwave 3D games are really outperforming other online games (at least in this demographic.) It seems like the time is definitely right for students and young developers to cut their teeth on Shockwave 3D.

Vast landscapes, super fast loading, graphically rich worlds, cool cars and controllers that are a really cool blend of responsive, and full of potential for subtle vehicle motion, all make this a definite must play game. It has tons of levels – and uses several conventions that demonstrate Chio’s penchant for challenging the ‘norms’ of the race genre. The flying guide bots give the game an extra flavor – and when one floats in to advise you of ranks / scores you can’t help but recall images of Star Wars: Phantom Menace. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUsltuNO6l8

Once you’ve mastered the driving, try out the beanie farming as well. Nice work Chio, its clearly a labor of love and amazing to see what you’ve put together working independently.

For the uninitiated, Xtras are similar to Dynamic Link Libraries (dll) and allow you the developer to ADD your own functionality to extend the stuff Director and Shockwave can do. Unlike most multimedia development software, Director and Shockwave can be extended at run time, as well as in the authoring environment. That means you can add amazing functionality. There are already xtras for all kinds of amazing things, (like using a Wii-mote to control your PC, or using video cameras to ‘see’ the local environment.

You can see a substantial list of available xtras for Director and Shockwave here at the Mile High Table of Products.

The new sound engine comes complete with a wide variety of native sound filters which allow the developer to dynamically modify the sounds. Deeper control over the sound playback includes using byteArrays to generate and modify sounds, dynamically setting the sound buffer to adjust the playback performance based on your needs, and a native pan-position matrix enabling virtual movement of audio sources around a 5.1 surround sound setup.

Full screen native video playback includes support for H.264, FLV, and F4V video. The audio engine is integrated with video playback to enable full audio control over the video’s sound track. Video can be played back both from the member and the sprite, allowing you to gain code based access to images as the video plays, and using an RTMP streaming server, you can stream video dynamically over the Internet.

Director 11.5 adds support for Import and dynamic translation of Google’s popular SketchUp (skp) 3D format, giving developers access to tens of thousands of models in the Google SketchUp Warehouse – and enabling easy import and conversion to Director’s native Shockwave 3D (w3d) format.

Productivity enhancements include a new byteArray member type and set of functions, designed to dramatically improve developer’s ability to work with binary data without need for an Xtra. Binary data can be stored and retrieved, locally, internally, and over the network. There are also functions for imaging lingo and sound integration of byteArrays. Director 11.5 also introduces mutiple undo for scripts and text members.

Demo games showcasing Director 11.5 features

http://www.adobe.com/products/shockwaveplayer/gokart/

http://www.adobe.com/products/shockwaveplayer/audiomixer/

Online Connect presentation ‘Getting Started with Director’

http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/gettingstartedwithdirector/

Extra content for Feature demos: Available at the trial download page