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04/14/08
Now that Shockwave 11 is around, people like me with lots of Shockwave content need to think about some things.
Shockwave 11 is so different than Shockwave 10 (new text rendering engine, new 3D physics Xtra) that Adobe has decided that they should co-exist, rather than 11 replacing 10. So consider these scenarios:
If a user has Shockwave 10, and they are viewing something made in Director 10 or before, then it runs in Shockwave 10.
If a user has Shockwave 10, but not 11, and they are viewing something made in Director 11, then they are told to install Shockwave 11, or it will auto-install with ActiveX in IE.
If a user has both Shockwave 10 and 11, then Shockwave 10 will be used to play Director 10 content, and Shockwave 11 will be used to play Director 11 content.
Seems simple enough? Right. But that’s just for Windows users. For Mac users, it is a different story. (I have a Mac podcast, BTW).
Shockwave 10 is a PowerPC browser plug-in. It doesn’t work on Intel machines unless you set the browser to run in Rosetta mode. Director 10 content will play like it did before on PowerPC Macs.
Shockwave 11 is an Intel browser plug-in, it works only on Intel Macs. All Shockwave content, Director 10 and 11, will play back using the Shockwave 11 plug-in.
So, if we discount PowerPC Mac users as just being able to play Director 11 content, then the problem is just that Intel Mac users will be looking at old content using the new engine.
This breaks things.
I’ve got a few games where the text doesn’t look or work right under Shockwave 11.
I’ve got a few games where the old physics engine is used, which means Mac Intel users just get an error message.
So this is why I’m less-than-thrilled about Shockwave 11. I’d imagine it will be a few months from now that I get around to making all my content Shockwave 11 compatible, by fixing text bugs and switching to the new physics engine. But even then I’ll still want to have some way for PowerPC users to continue to use the Director 10 versions of the games.
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03/25/08
The main Adobe link for Shockwave 11 still directs Mac Intel users to a page explaining how to set your browser to Rosetta mode and download Shockwave 10. But the page at http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/alternates/ contains a link to the real Shockwave 11 for Intel Macs.
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Well, believe it or not, the long winter is over. Director 11 has been released. We now have a native Mac Intel version of both Director and Shockwave. We’ve got a new physics engine and a re-commitment to Shockwave 3D as it is now DirectX9 compatible. We’ve got a new text engine with unicode. We’ve got Flash 9 support — sort of. We’ve got the name “Adobe” before “Director”.
Points of contention are: It works on Leopard, but is only officially supported on Tiger (what?!). Old Havok-based movies will work in Shockwave 11 on Windows, but not on Mac since there is no Intel version of the Havok Xtra. The new text engine screws up some text in some old movies. Flash support includes Flash 9 and AS3, but not Flash 9 components. So if you use AS3 components in your Flash movies, they won’t work.
The good news: lots of talk about a commitment to Director and versions 12 and 13 already in the planning stages. I’ll be blogging more in the coming days and weeks about Director 11.
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03/14/08
So it looks like we might already be seeing the first snag in the whole iPhone development thing. I filled out the form, asked them to take my $99, and then I waited a whole week. I just got this:
“Thank you for expressing interest in the iPhone Developer Program. We have received your enrollment request. As this time, the iPhone Developer Program is available to a limited number of developers and we plan to expand during the beta period. We will contact you again regarding your enrollment status at the appropriate time.”
So the issue here is will Apple be restricting the ability to make iPhone apps even before it sees the app? Will it only be accepting big developers, like EA and Sega?
For me, this is an important issue. I have the tools and am already working on an iPhone app. But now I’m nervous about the whole thing. Am I wasting my time? I can spend weeks working on the app, and then find out that Apple doesn’t want me in their program because I am too small of a shop or something.
I simply can’t afford to spend weeks or month developing something only to find out I can’t publish it.
So I guess I will halt development of my app until I find out. It is too risky. I wish Apple would clarify, or just take my $99.
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02/19/08
Adobe announced Director 11 at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. It will ship in March, with an upgrade price of $299 (from 8.5, MX and MX 2004) or a full price of $999. A $99 educational version will also be available. It updates the 3D engine to DirectX 9, and replaces the Havok Physics Xtra with a Ageia PhysX Xtra. There will be a new script browser, support for Flash 9, and unicode text support. It looks like there will be a whole new text engine included. We can expect this new version to be Intel native for Macs as well. You can already pre-order Director 11 on the Adobe Web site.
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