Director @ Night

Shockwave Updated: New Snow Leopard Statement

An updated version of Shockwave was released today. When installing on Snow Leopard (OSX 10.6) it now gives you a message to run Safari in 32-bit mode.

This is definitely friendlier than the prior message.

Add comment November 3rd, 2009

Snow Leopard (OSX 10.6), Shockwave, and Director

Apple has released the latest version of their operating system which is commonly referred to as Snow Leopard (OSX 10.6). What does this mean to users that want to see Shockwave-based content? What does this mean to those that author with Director MX 2004 or newer? What does this mean for projectors from Director MX 2004, 11, or 11.5?

Here is the scoop based on my observations.

For Shockwave things will run fine if you run in 32-bit mode in Safari. To do that you can select the Safari icon and Get Info. Then select 32-bit mode. You can read that in greater detail on this ExploreLearning blog post.

Safari in 32-bit mode

For authoring I’ve tested Director 11.5 and have not noticed any problems. However, Director MX 2004 is a different story. For some strange reason it is one of just seven programs in the entire world that are restricted from opening by Apple and the new operating system (read the Apple Technote). Out of all the programs in the world, what on Earth does Director MX 2004 do on a computer that causes Apple to ban the app?

Director MX 2004 Restricted!

Somewhere Apple is storing information that causes this message to appear. If anyone knows where that is I’d love to know I tried opening the Director MX 2004 package and changed the CFBundleIdentifier in the info.plist from 2004 to 2005 just to see what would happen. When I did that the program began to launch, the icon would bounce in the dock a few times, and then it would crash. I got the standard crash message at this point where I could report it to Apple or cancel. I canceled. I edited the info.plist once again and set it back to 2004. At this point it would always crash and I wouldn’t get the “restricted” message again. I’d say I broke something. Oh well…seems at this point it is impossible to run Dir MX 2004 on Snow Leopard.

For older projectors (that could run under 10.5 with Rosetta) things are both good and bad. The projectors will still run, but unfortunately Apple has decided that Rosetta is an optional installation now, so it doesn’t get installed by default. When I tried to launch a projector I got a message that Rosetta was needed.

Rosetta Needed Message

I agreed to install it and the 2 meg download took place. The next time I launched the projector it worked normally.

Rosetta Download

You must always remember that the first time you launch something that needs Rosetta it will take 15 or more seconds. On subsequent launches it will just take a few seconds.

Projectors created with Director 11+ will run as expected without Rosetta.

I’m still shocked that Director MX 2004 is one of just seven apps that are officially restricted by Apple. I basically use the older version of Director all the time to edit older content that I don’t want the files to have to be updated with the new unicode text. I guess I’ll now have to keep one computer running 10.5. I’m bummed. If anyone does find a way to get MX 2004 running on 10.6, please drop me a line.

Update: I forgot to mention the Shockwave installation issue. When I tried to install Shockwave I got the following message saying that it only works on 10.4 and 10.5. I clicked OK and then ran the installer. It properly installed the plugin. On the other hand, the uninstaller seemed to run for a long time and not really do anything. I waited about five minutes and then force quit it, so not entirely sure if it was doing anything or not.

Shockwave Install warning message on Snow Leopard.

7 comments September 2nd, 2009

Shockwave 3D vs. Google

Google introduced a new way to create 3D content for the web. Looks interesting.

Most content on the web today is in 2D, but a lot of information is more fun and useful in 3D. Projects like Google Earth and SketchUp demonstrate our passion and commitment to enabling users to create and interact with 3D content. We’d like to see the web offering the same type of 3D experiences that can be found on the desktop. That’s why, a few weeks ago, we announced our plans to contribute our technology and web development expertise to the discussions about 3D for the web within Khronos and the broader developer community.

4 comments April 21st, 2009

Firefox 3 and Mac: Solution to Vanishing Content

Ever since Firefox 3 came out there has been a problem on Macs where chunks/regions of the the displayed dcr file would would just “vanish” and show the background color of the html page you were viewing. [Note: With FF 3.0.1 I would rarely see this on a PC as well.] On Direct-L Valentin posted a possible solution that could be used to deal with this problem by adding some javascript to the html page.

You can see the code that was used below, read the entire thread (it is a long thread), and see it in action here.

HTML code that helps to properly display Shockwave-content on Macs that are using Firefox 3.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en">
<head>
<title>FF3 mac sw bug fix</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
<script type="text/javascript">
<!--
function init(){
	var isFFMac=(navigator.platform.indexOf('Mac')>-1&&navigator.userAgent.indexOf('Firefox')>-1);
	if(isFFMac){
		var sw=document.getElementById('sw');
		sw.onmousedown=function(){return false};
		sw.data=sw.data;
	}
}
//-->
</script>
</head>
<body onload="init()">



<div>
<!--[if IE]>
<object classid="clsid:233C1507-6A77-46A4-9443-F871F945D258" width="320" height="240">
<param name="src" value="myFileName.dcr" />
<![endif]-->
<!--[if !IE]>-->
<object id="sw" type="application/x-director" data="myFileName.dcr" width="320" height="240">
<!--<![endif]-->
<param name="PlayerVersion" value="11" />



</object>
</div>



<script type="text/javascript">document.write('<'+'div style="color:green">JAVASCRIPT IS ACTIVATED!<'+'/div>');</script>
<noscript><div style="color:red">YOU DON'T HAVE JAVASCRIPT ACTIVATED!</div></noscript>
</body>
</html>

Update (July 20, 2009). Note: Using the method has proven to have problems with editable text members that are displayed in the content. So as of now, nothing seems to work reliably. Firefox 3.5.1 is now the current release, and it continues to have the same problem. Adobe has stated that FF is not included on the list of approved Mac browsers.

Add comment April 12th, 2009

Updated Shockwave 11.5 is Under Development

From Allen on various mailing lists:

Just an update, as I know many are interested. Early next week we plan to deliver a fix for the text line spacing (height) issue in Shockwave 11.5 to the Shockwave pre-release testers. Expect a Shockwave update following that session. Normally such cycles take a minimum of two weeks. (We added a permanent Shockwave pre-release beta testing group, which will always be able to activate for various Shockwave updates.)

Danny K, a couple of the imaging lingo errors you reported were verified and marked to fix, but aren’t planned for this short term update. Apparently they existed in 11 as well. (performance issue on 8 bit imaging objects)

Sound concerns re the removed audio compression settings on export. The simple answer is that mp3 files are substantially more optimized and are the preferred file format in order to deal with pre-compressing audio. I think the larger community concern is that legacy projects may contain high volumes of wav files and that absent the ability to “compress at once” and store in cast it becomes untenable to imagine dealing with huge stores of files to convert to mp3. I’ve asked engineering to give me some options / perhaps a white paper for handling conversion as such. I imagine that it would be simple enough to simply write a widget in Director now that we can save mp3 etc. to just rip through the sounds in a project and save all the wavs as mp3 sounds. I’ll let you know when I either get something back substantial, or I come up with some kind of pipeline myself. Perhaps others have given this some thought as well.

3 comments March 31st, 2009

Director 11.5 Has Arrived

A new version of Director was released today, along with a new version of Shockwave.

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.

10 comments March 23rd, 2009

How to “Fix” Shockwave

I had this comment come in the other day but figured I’d make it a post since this is a big issue that has been popping up for years at my workplace.

Is there anybody who can tell me how to fix shockwave 11 it says it is installed, however it is not on my program list and when I try to play games that require it, it pops up saying 1 or more shockwave files are missing! Is there anyone out there that actually knows how to fix this! I am beginning to hate windows vista!

thank you

Lori

I can’t say much about Vista, and I could go in to great detail about what could be happening in some cases, but the short answer is this: download the Shockwave uninstaller, run it on your computer, and then download the FULL INSTALLER and not the default “slim” installer.

If that does not work, then it could be due to the content you are viewing. Some people use Xtras in the content, and many of those Xtras have not been updated to work with Shockwave 11.

In any event, running the uninstaller, followed by a full installation solves this sort of problem for the vast number of users that have issues like the one you described. Hope that helps out.

Note: On the Mac version the uninstaller is bundled with the installer, but for Windows you’ll have to download the uninstaller separately.

Add comment January 15th, 2009

Hotfix update for Shockwave (and Director…soon)

An updated version of Shockwave was posted last week, and a hotfix for Director will be posted early this week.

Release Notes for Shockwave 11.0.3.470.

Release Notes for Shockwave 11.0.3.470

Shockwave build number: 11.0.3.470

1) Kerning was not available in Director 11.

Kerning is implemented for the font types supported by Director 11.

2) There were additional spaces at the end of the line when text was justified.

Bug is fixed. Justification of text correctly takes into account spaces at the end of the line.

3) When the sprite width was greater than 1536 pixels, text was not rendered properly. A black patch appeared in the text window\text sprite in some cases.

This issue is fixed for text sprites whose width and the height is greater than 1536 pixels.

4) Director used to crash when the following fonts were applied to the text sprite. (Mac OS 10.5)

• ApplySymbols
• Papyrus
• Papyrus condensed
• STHeiti( Light)
• STHeiti( Regular )
• Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro
• Hiragino Mincho Pro
• STFangSong
• LiSong Pro
• STSong
• STKaiti

This issue has been fixed.

5) Certain custom icons appeared fuzzy on the projector.

This issue has been fixed.

6) Changes to the value for friction and restitution of rigid bodies after collision did not have any effect on the Physics World.

This issue has been fixed.

7) When force was applied to a rigid body in a Physics World, a spin was observed.

This is because the rigid body always has an affinity towards the world axis.

A new rigid body property, called axisAffinity, has been added. The value of the axisAffinity property is true by default. The affinity towards the world axis is compensated by setting the property to false. When you set the property to false, the spin is not observed.

The computations are more when axisAffinity is false; set the property to false only when required.

Sample code snippet

aball = pDynamiks.createRigidBody(ball.name,ball.name,#sphere,#dynamic)
aball.mass=1000
aball.sleepThreshold = 100
aball.friction= 1
aball.restitution = 0
aball.axisAffinity = false

8 ) The Maintain Proportion option in the Sprite’s scale dialog box, and Transform bitmap dialog box, did not produce the required results in Director on a MAC 10.4 G5 machine.

This issue has been fixed for both the dialog boxes.

9) Externally linked Scripts got deleted when external files had MAC line ending characters.

This problem occurred when a text file created on MAC with MAC line endings was imported to a Windows machine and saved. This issue has been fixed.

10) On a computer running on Windows Vista, Flash and Shockwave content on the same HTML page were not able to communicate.

This issue has been fixed.

11) The value of timestep and substep was not ignored in the Automatic time step mode while initializing the Physics body.

Automatic time step is supposed to take the elapsed time for advancing the Physics World simulation. This was not working properly for all values of time step.

12) Physics Xtra throws an error when the value for the timestep and substep parameters is zero in the Automatic time step mode.

This is a valid value for automatic time step and no error is thrown when you specify a value of zero. However, zero values for timestep and substep are invalid for other modes and the error will be shown.

13) Memory leak when models were cloned using cloneModelFromCastMember() and resetworld()

Models and texture files were not cleaned as intended when cloneModelFromCastMember() and resetworld() were used. This resulted in a small memory leak.

14) Downloading a new version of the custom Xtra did not replace the previous version after the user closed the browser

When a user plays a Shockwave movie that requires the latest version of a custom Xtra, the custom Xtra is downloaded to the user’s computer in the same location as the previous version of the Xtra. The new Xtra is placed in a folder named New. This happens only when a previous version of the custom Xtra exists on the computer.

When the user closes the browser, the new version should replace the previous custom Xtra and the “New” folder should get deleted. This was not happening and has been fixed now.

The new custom Xtra replaces the previous version when:

• The user closes the browser.
• The Shockwave player is opened in a new instance of the browser. This happens, if for some reason, the Shockwave player did not unload the new Custom Xtra when the user closed the browser.

Feature Enhancement

rayCastAll method in Physics(Dynamiks xtra) takes an optional parameter for sorting the returned list.

Usage

<list> world.rayCastAll(vector origin,vector direction,[[#sorted:#distance]])

Description

This method returns references of all the rigid bodies or terrains that are found along the ray from the specified origin and specified direction. The method also returns the point of contact, contact normal, and the distance from the origin of the ray.

Parameters

parameter Description

Origin Required. Vector that specifies the origin of the raycast direction Required. Vector that specifies the direction of the raycast.

[#sorted:#distance] Optional list. Specifies that the returned list should be sorted on distance

Return parameter

This method returns a list containing a list having the following information:

• Rigid body / Terrain reference
• Contact Point
• Contact Normal
• Distance of the rigid body or terrain, from the origin of the ray.

Example

‐‐Lingo Syntax

lstraycast = member(“PhysicsWorld”).rayCastAll (vector(10,0,0),vector(0,0,1))

‐‐Returns an unsorted list containing the above parameters

put lstraycast

lstraycast = member(“PhysicsWorld”).rayCastAll (vector(10,0,0),vector(0,0,1),[#sorted:#distance])

‐‐Returns an sorted list containing the above parameters

put lstraycast

//JavaScript Syntax

var lstraycast = member(“PhysicsWorld”).rayCastAll (vector(10,0,0),vector(0,0,1));

‐‐Returns a unsorted list containing the above parameters

put(lstraycast);

lstraycast = member(“PhysicsWorld”).rayCastAll (vector(10,0,0),vector(0,0,1),

propList(symbol(“sorted”),symbol(“distance”)));

//Returns a sorted list containing the above parameters

put(lstraycast);

1 comment November 10th, 2008

Mac Shockwave Updated

I noticed a new build of Shockwave for Mac was released today. Wonder what is new?

Guess I’ll be playing with it tomorrow to see if anything broke

Update: Seems as if the Windows version has also been updated.

Add comment August 6th, 2008

Shockwave.ini jumps to new home (OSX)

For the developers out there that like to get a slightly more descriptive error message in their Shockwave-based content you need to have a Shockwave.ini file placed in your shockwave folder. This prior post talked about where you should put it for Shockwave 10 on OSX.

With Shockwave 11 you should navigate to your /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Shockwave 11/ folder. There you will see the DirectorShockwave.bundle. Control-click (right-click) on that bundle and choose “Show contents.” Inside that sits the Plugin.framework folder.

Place the Shockwave.ini in that folder (you will probably have to enter your password at that time) with this text in it.

[Lingo]
DisplayFullLingoErrorText=1

That usually makes debugging just a bit easier

Note: I haven’t yet looked in to the location for Windows. If anyone knows feel free to comment. I’m sure I’ll need to look for it one of these days.

Add comment April 24th, 2008