Shockwave 11.5 has been in the top 5 of the MacUpdate Most Popular downloads since it came out. Director 11.5 got covered on MacNN, MacWorld, and Macsimum News. (Can you tell I’m a Mac guy?)

The screenshots from a few moments ago show the Director story was very popular on MacWorld, and Shockwave is currently #4 in the weekly downloads on MacUpdate.

It seems as if the Adobe PR department has been much busier with this version of Director than they were with the last. That seems to be a very good sign that Director is here to stay for a bit longer.

You can download Director, Shockwave, as well as many demos at this location (you’ll need to login with your Adobe ID).

Let the fun begin!

Update: Director 11.5 can also be found on Amazon.

Update 2: List of features:

• Enriched audio capabilities Make your games sound as real as they look with 5.1-channel surround sound, real-time mixing, audio effects, and DSP filters.
• Enhanced video capabilities Enhance your user’s multimedia experience using H.264-video integration that provides full-screen, high-definition video in multimedia applications and games.
• New 3D importer for SketchUp Rapidly create rich 3D environments using the many ready-made 3D models available through Google SketchUp.
• Streaming support Stream audio and video over the Internet using RTMP support.
• New data type Access and manipulate binary data using the ByteArray data type.
• Enhanced physics engine Support for dynamic concave rigid bodies.
• Enhanced productivity Support for multiple undo/redo operations.
• Cross domain policy
• Enhancements to the text engine
• Open Type Font (OTF) embedding support on Macintosh OS.
• Class-based kerning support.
• Hinting support at a member level.
• Enhancements to platform and browser support
• Macintosh OSX 10.5 (authoring and runtime) support.
• Firefox 3.0 support.

More information can be found on DirectorForum in this thread.

Constellation (created with Director) won 2nd place in the Best Overall, Best Gameplay, and Best Presentation categories!

Congratulations Matthew!

Allen Partridge, Adobe Systems, hosts professional 3D game developers Pieter Albers and Diederick Groesbeek, Xform Games, Malachy Duffin, CanDo Interactive, Steve Becerra and Richard Chala, Mockworld, and David Mullich, Spin Master demonstrating & discussing design and development strategies for creating profitable, high-performance games for the web. Topics include technology challenges, design approach, business advantage & browser-based 3D.

I wonder if Director 11.5 will get shown at that time? Hmm…fits in well with the April 4th shipping date on Amazon.

Is that number larger than you thought? Smaller? Needless to say, this sparked a bit of discussion on the Direct-L mailing list this week. Does the number indicate “active” developers? People that occasionally use Director to maintain old content? Hard to say.

Several people that run sites talked about their stats^*, and that brought up more issues. I personally know that stats can “show” most anything you choose. Using Google stats you can at least be sure you have the same program doing the analysis.

German Directorforum
Absolute Unique Visitors: 290,512 (1 year)

International Directorforum
Absolute Unique Visitors: 22,195 (11 months since launch)

Dean’s Director Tutorials
Absolute Unique Visitors: almost 65,000 (1 year)

And here at Director @ Night
Absolute Unique Visitors: 18,484 (11 months, was down for 1 month)

So what does this mean? Hard to say. I do know that this site does very little, but I still get visitors. I’d love to see stats on the Adobe Forums. Personally I think the 200k number is a bit high, but I would be willing to go with 100k. The bigger item of interest (to us Director developers) will be what happens to this number in the next few years as the new versions of Director get released. Amazon still shows Director 11.5 for April 4th. Adobe has been at the Game Developers Conference the past two years, so marketing is increasing. I even saw an ad for Director on my gmail page.

So are there 200,000 Director developers out there? As a Magic 8-ball might say, “Ask again later.”

^*Stats are from Martin and Dean on Direct-L

Be sure to check out the case study.

Most Director sites haven’t been really lively in the past few years (including this one) as compared to five or ten years ago, so it is good to see a few sprouts popping up here in the springtime.

SocioTown is the biggest and most sophisticated browser-based 3D virtual world to date. Players can enjoy a fully immersive and persistent 3D environment such that hasn’t been seen on the web yet. Player data is stored in database servers, so users can play anywhere from home, work, or school without skipping a beat.

The screenshots on the page look really sweet.

For immediate release

Major Product Upgrade Advances Multimedia Authoring Environment

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Feb. 19, 2008 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced Adobe® Director® 11 software, a major upgrade to the company’s powerful multimedia authoring tool for building interactive applications and rich content. The latest release contains a flexible and easy-to-use authoring environment enabling multimedia authors, animators and developers to create powerful interactive applications, games, e-learning and simulation products…

The Director product page has also been updated. I like the new box

Image links to CDW product page.

Adobe next month will release Director 11, an update to its graphics assembly, that it hopes will lure game developers with its better 3D imaging.

Adobe is expected to detail the latest features of Director at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday.

Director 11 is used to build games, as well as graphics-rich presentations, and learning applications. It uses the Shockwave plug-in to render 3D graphics.

The latest version includes physics, or movement between images, using the Ageia PhysX engine and support for DirectX 9, which can take advantage of recent graphics cards.

It will make it easier for designers to create more realistic 3D images, such as colliding cars on a racing game, said Rick Jones, senior product marketing manager at Adobe. The inclusion of Flash Player 9 enables the inclusion of animations and slick graphics for things like game menus.

When Adobe releases Director 11 next month, the price will be $999, rather than $1,199, which is the cost of the current version. Upgrades are $299 and a new student edition is available for $99.

Source: 1, 2, 3

And from the Adobe Director support forums, skiplondon has posted the following, so be sure to get your questions to him:

We are out in San Francisco for the announcement of new version of Director which will be coming from Adobe tomorrow. We will be reporting on this and sitting down with all the people on the Adobe Director team.

If you would like to have me ask them any questions for you, please email me at director @ magicgate . com . You only have about 24 hours left to submit your questions. These will be aired on our next episode of the Director Podcast hopefully on Wednesday morning.

If you wish to hear older episodes of our show, you can go to http://director.magicgate.com

SKIP

Thanks for that Skip, I’ll be looking forward to the next Podcast!