I am wondering if anyone knows any details about the release date for Director
11. I have been waiting to upgrade my products for that release. My company's
products completely depend on Director, which is an amazingly great piece of
software, and whose functionality for programming in the kiosk and museum
exhibit environment is not duplicated in any other existing programming
environment. I am desperately hoping that Adobe realizes this and does not
have plans to give up on a community of developers who don't have clear
alternatives. That seems like an especially bad thing to do considering all of
the encouragement we were given to hold out for the update version. Without
that, my products will probably die.

You and everyone else is waiting. And waiting. The details of such announcement
has an announcement date itself of sometime in Febuary 2008. Again, thats a
date about the date about Director 11. It was November 07, then December, then
Jan. 08, now Feb. I'm really looking forward to their announcement (hopefully)
this Febuary that at the very least they'll say Director 11 will be announced
within the next 10 years. But as you can see, getting Adobe to stick to a date,
at which they will talk about yet another future date has been difficult. Lets
all hope that Adobe sticks to their Feb. date to tell us something about
Director -hopefully about date, although it may be just about something
else.... grrr

Adobe is probably planning to announce D11 officially at GDC '08, probably on
opening day, February 18th. This is the 'for games' version of Director,
after all and the new Adobe evangelist has already announced on his blog that
he will be at GDC on behalf of Adobe this year.

[q]Originally posted by: MartyPlumbo Adobe is probably
planning to announce D11 officially at GDC '08, probably on opening day,
February 18th. [/q] Could be true, but they have a tiny booth (6301H), seen on
this floor plan link. So they won't have much to show even if they do announce
something for release later in the year.
http://www.gdconf.com/expo/floorplan...po%20Floor.pdf

Hmmm, good detective work there, liveoak. With a booth that small, maybe
they're just going to announce the latest revised date for the official
announcement of the announcement of the forthcoming release of Director 11
then. ;-)

Doesn't Adobe realize that their market base is in the graphic design segment
(a stigma now) and aquiring of Macromedia lead to a HUGE potential asset of
aquiring software solution developers for Adobe AIR? They are letting that go
by isolating Director developers. I personally develope using PHP, Java, C++,
ActionScript and Lingo and I do honestly find Director a perfect fit for alot
of my clients. Although that is dwindling not because of new solutions but
because of age (old 3d, lack of mac ability, xml parser with memory leaks,
etc). COME ON ADOBE! YOU ARE LOSING YOUR NEW FOUND FOCUS!!! With this total
lack of attention, I'm more and more likely to move all my clients away from
'Adobe' Director and take Silverlight and various MS SDKs more seriously and
not even consider AIR! If you are going to ignore Director, at least don't
ignore your revenue stream and try to appeal to Director Developers with
migration/literature/Hot AIR about what Adobe can do for developers (and the
developers you've isolated and ignored). Otherwise you'll be left with a new
Adobe Software developer company with no client developers, -just graphic
artist wondering why your company focus isn't on them!

MartyPlumbo wrote:
> Hmmm, good detective work there, liveoak. With a booth that small, maybe
> they're just going to announce the latest revised date for the official
> announcement of the announcement of the forthcoming release of Director 11
> then. ;-)
>

Yes, this is beginning to sound like the next Duke Nukem Forever - maybe
there was a pun intended!

Prof. S

scarroll wrote:
> Doesn't Adobe realize that their market base is in the graphic design segment
> (a stigma now) and aquiring of Macromedia lead to a HUGE potential asset of
> aquiring software solution developers for Adobe AIR? They are letting that go
> by isolating Director developers. I personally develope using PHP, Java, C++,
> ActionScript and Lingo and I do honestly find Director a perfect fit for alot
> of my clients. Although that is dwindling not because of new solutions but
> because of age (old 3d, lack of mac ability, xml parser with memory leaks,
> etc). COME ON ADOBE! YOU ARE LOSING YOUR NEW FOUND FOCUS!!! With this total
> lack of attention, I'm more and more likely to move all my clients away from
> 'Adobe' Director and take Silverlight and various MS SDKs more seriously and
> not even consider AIR! If you are going to ignore Director, at least don't
> ignore your revenue stream and try to appeal to Director Developers with
> migration/literature/Hot AIR about what Adobe can do for developers (and the
> developers you've isolated and ignored). Otherwise you'll be left with a new
> Adobe Software developer company with no client developers, -just graphic
> artist wondering why your company focus isn't on them!
>

And so what would be the closest alternative to Director for developing
a role-playing adventure game?

Prof. S.

An alternative to Director? After looking at www.gamespace.com, and hundreds of
role playing games. I would have to say anything but Director. Although
Director *would have been ideal*. The thought makes my stomach sick as I know
that Director/Shockwave's install base is less and less. With the claim of it
being the number one 3D render on the web (many calling BS on this one) I would
have to now say *its less and less likely to be Director* and definately not
AIR. For a role playing game in 3D I would have to point to custom, and in
most cases, platform dependent software written in either C++, or a scripting
like ECMA Script language coupled with a library like Orgre3D or Unity3D. For
standalone development its clear that there are dozens of development
environments from DarkBASIC to Torque, and the list goes on. Director, for
me, holds a special place in my heart as being one the first languages I picked
up (Lingo). Coupled with a familiarity, its a natural bias. Its just sad that
its also a misguided, isolated, and lost one...

For non-3D game development, and given what should be a good, upcoming update
to the web plug-in and authoring environment with D1q, you still won't be able
to beat Director. For 3D though, there's nothing even close to Unity. If
you can get past the perplexing I-can't-buy-a-Mac-itis that so many people
harangue on, Unity is nothing short of amazing for 3D game development. IMHO