GDC to take off today - Page 2 - Directorforum

keymap · 03-12-10, 15:34

Unity may well be the present and future, but let's not forget that coding with it is several degrees of difficulty beyond Director - there are still MANY things that you can do in 1 line of Lingo that you can't do nearly as simply in Unity. In a previous thread someone mentioned that there are no great Unity online games yet as compared to Shockwave. I think this is a result of the fact that Director still remains more friendly to artist and designer types, no? Holding out hope, naively perhaps, that there's still a place for Dir.

Alexx · 03-12-10, 16:28

The only problem is that we still don't know if Director has a future or not, even after many months under the "care" of Adobe...

Personnaly, I work almost only on some big/long projects involving Director, and I'm bored to really don't know what answer to give to my customers when they ask about the future of shockwave (or even if it has one), and if it's a good idea to spend a lot of time/money in something that could die soon...

That's why I say Director is almost dead : it's more and more difficult to let our customers choose this solution and justify this choice. And if I'm not mistaken, our living money comes from them, no ?

snarkiest · 03-13-10, 10:26

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/586793
it made my day. haha.

mythicwave · 03-14-10, 09:30

Let's be proactive. Find all Adobe execs on Linked In, Facebook, etc. and request to connect. Start writing them email, attend Adobe or related events, evangelize for Director (since Allen won't do it). Make some noise! I've started doing some of this. It actually might help... Anything's worth a try, right?

Arnold · 03-14-10, 10:33

So what would be your pitch? Director is cought between Flash on the 2D side and Unity on the 3D side. (assuming all the other products like silverlight, AppCelerator, ect are part of that spectrum)

The only people that want director to live are the people that have been using it and are afraid it will cost them invested time and money if it dies. If a person needs to pick a product now and this person knows all the available options out there and has no experiance with any one of them, there is no way they will pick Director. (they will probabbly not even find it as an alternative to flash these days)

The only thing the Adobe execs will listen to is the sound of money. If you can make a pitch on how Director can make them a lot of money they might listen. But it will probabbly cost a lot of money first (lot bigger dev team and advertising). It will take a part of the flash market, which will again cost them money. And taking over unity's market will take such a big leap in 3D technology it will cost about the same to add a good 3D engine to Flash.

Xtras are one nice feature of director, but to get good xtras you will need to have a good amount of Director developers that are willing to buy the Xtras. Also the downloading of Xtras is a really scarry proces for users (with the pop-ups ect).
Adobe should just include proven 3th party Xtras (Set Mouse Cursor Xtra, ect.) to the shockwave player, but by default you will get a slim shockwave player that does not even have all the Xtras native to Director (for the new mixer object you need the full plugin installed, the slim will not even download the missing xtras.)

Anyway I think if saving director is on your mind the best way would be to make great applications (in shockwave) and this way get more plugin penetration and knowledge that Director exists. And prefferably do some stuff with it that flash and/or unity cannot do. {if such an application exists}

mythicwave · 03-14-10, 10:50

I hadn't thought about pitching how Director could make them money... You're right. I should think about that. I still don't think it is ready to be killed. But I can appeal to their aesthetic or human side (if they have one).

We did develop a great Director app last year - version 3 of a really popular teacher tool. It features Impressario which creates PDFs on the fly. Can Flash do that? Can Air? We even paid Integration New Media for a custom version of Impressario / Shockwave.

Rewriting that in Flash or another technology really makes me nauseous.

-- Brian

Arnold · 03-14-10, 12:05

hehe there you have it, just made 2 of my points.

1. Make something that can create PDFs, so Adobe can make less money from Acrobat Writer.

2. Make a product for a selective market that will not help director to be known by the general audience (and therefore new developers).

Point 2 is not your fault as a developer you need to pay the bills. But Adobe should try to get in tough with people how make 'great Director apps' like you (I'll just take your word on it) and ask for a Demo of the project {or a video displaying the use of the product, (do you have a marketing video ?) and put it on their Director product site. Now there are almost only games there and not even the best games}
And i think for a lot of people it would just take Adobe (Alen) to ask "we want to show off the capabileties of Director do you have anything nice we can put on the Adobe website ?"

But this is the basic communication that is missing... And having some better/more diverse demo's on the website will not be enough, but it does show the lack of resources put into director.