Apr 19
Macromedia’s history
2005 at 11.00 pm posted by Veerle Pieters
An aspect of Duoh! that we didn’t talked about so far here is the creation of CD-ROMS. But first let us turn back the clock a little. It all starts somewhere in 1985 with a company called MacroMind. They released an application called Videoworks and struck a licensing deal with Apple in 1986 to put an “interactive guided tour” on every shipped Mac.
In 1988 it was time to change the name from Videoworks Interactive Pro to Director 1.0. Let's forward time a little to version 3.1.3, that was when the name Macromind Director became Macromedia Director. This was also the version that gained support from a new and revolutionary technology from Apple known as QuickTime.
That brings us somewhere in 1993 and the multimedia hype was buzzing on Mac. Remenber Windows was still at version 3.11. An example of a hot seller from that period is called Myst. A game that was entirely created on Apple Macintosh Quadra computers. The entire game was essentially a very large, color HyperCard stack, with each card consisting of a three-dimensionally rendered scene. The game was ported to Microsoft Windows in 1994.
In 1995 Macromedia for the first time showed us Shockwave during a public demonstration. You could run video movies created by Director and without the jerkiness typically associated with computer video. If I remember correctly Shockwave files were created by an application called Afterburner.
1996 - Director 5
We bought our first Director in 1996, it was Director 5 a new version with support for Xtras and a new debugger. Meanwhile others came up with ideas too. One of those is now a great part of our daily Internet experience. I am talking about a company called FutureWave they developed a drawing application called SmartSketch. It was a vector based animation program for the Internet. Adobe and Fractal Design weren't interested in this little application. Macromedia on the other hand thought differently and eventually bought the company. In 1996 Flash 1.0 was released onto the market.
1997 - Director 6
Time flies and in 1997 Director 6 was released and gained integrated Shockwave support so that the Afterburner Xtra was no longer needed. Macromedia also gives us Director 6.5 a version that fixed problems with QuickTime 3.
1998 - Macromedia Director 7 Shockwave Internet Studio
In 1998 Macromedia was convinced that the future of Director lies on the Internet. That's why Macromedia relased a box called Macromedia Director 7 Shockwave Internet Studio. According to Macromedia this version was rebuilt from the ground up. Some of the new features included support for 1000 sprite channels, sprite rotation and skewing, RGB support and embedded fonts and vector shapes. This is the point in time that Director wasn't the favorite kid anymore and Macromedia started to divert more resources away from Director. Flash was the new kid in town and had many more advantages because of its smaller plugin size.
2000 - Director MX
It's from then on that Macromedia slowed down development for Director. In 2000 they released Director 8 an improvement from Director 7 but with less new features, but it was much more stabile and reliable. Somewhere at the end of 2002 Macromedia dropped the number naming scheme and Director was now known as Director MX. Flash 6 compatibility and Mac OS X support were the major features. With the release of Director 8.5 some major improvements were implemented in the Director engine. The most important (from my point of view) was the optimalisation of the built-in 3D engine and the W3D-file format. Since the release of Director 7 (ca. 1998) Macromedia introduced the programming part of its clients to the concept of "quads", which later on developped into its own 3D-engine.
Let me introduce you to Sven, our Director guru :
About 3 years ago I made the "Piwi and the Floating Mountains" demo; an online 3D game which runs smoothly on both platforms, using DirectX or OpenGL and was made using... yes, Director. The game is never finished due to time restrictions and still bears some minor flaws but gives a very good view of what one can achieve by using the power of Lingo. Initially this game was used to warm-up possible clients, but so far nobody has ever reacted to the game. Today about 60% of the "interneteers" has the Shockwave plugin locked and loaded in their browser, so why won't people play ? Anyway, I rest my case, just to expose the power of the Director 3D engine...
2004 - Director MX 2004
That brings us to last year. At the beginning of 2004 we welcomed Director MX 2004. If you compare MX and MX 2004 then MX 2004 was a significant update. Spotlight features in this version are full support for ECMAScript-compliant JavaScript syntax, which supplements traditional Lingo support, new projector Publishing panel that it is no longer necessary to own 2 copies of Director to produce a projector for both Mac and Windows. Needless to say that the 3D engine got a boost and some bugs were removed during the 10.1 patch, which was released by Macromedia halfway 2004.
2005 - ?
With the news of yesterday that Adobe has bought Macromedia, Director's future is in question. Even Macromedia treated Director like a second class citizen if you compare all the efforts that went to Flash. Personally I always thought that Interactive CD-ROMS would become a big part of our computer experience but that proved not to be true. It is also not only about CD-ROMS, remember Director is also used for the production of online games. Shockwave.com is a perfect example to see what kind of games that are possible. Personalized gaming plays a role in some major product promotions. Sven's thoughts :
Personally I think that the whole internet evolves into an extended mix of (Macromedia) Flash and (Adobe) Acrobat content. Adobe pushes the Portable Desktop Format & Flash is an excellent tool that is accesible for both professional as home users... So I think this whole thingy could be dangerous to the further existance of the Director family, but on the other hand most of Adobe's interactive walk-throughs and tutorials were made with Director, even with PDF & Flash-data embedded... brrr, makes me shiver, "Made with Macromedia" - It allmost has a sentimental touch to it.
Nobody knows what will happen if this merger comes true and what Adobe's plans will be with Director. I'm left with sort of a bad taste that this whole merger thing is about Flash. Now you know that it was Director that actuallly started everything for Macromedia.
Update! On a positive note (at least for Director) Marc Canter, one of the founders wants to get the product back because Macromedia more or less have abandoned it. Sounds like Marc and Macromedia have some beef! You can read all about it on his blog.
14served
1
Ah, the heady days of FutureSplash—I remember thinking how wonderful it would be if *this* one plugin amongst all other nonsense made the grade. Which it did.
And the equally heady days of setting theAttribute of theThingy to theWossname of theOtherThingy—I remember hoping that could ever become a “real” language. Which it did, in a way, much later.
Have to admit I hadn’t really given Director a lot of thought these last couple of years, but this entry sure brought back a lot of memories.
Not always very good memories, mind you—the wrangling with Director in the 1990s was at times extremely time-consuming and frustrating—but still.
Those were the days :)
2
It’s an interesting post, especially given my somewhat unconsidered earlier opinions, I am amazed to find Myst mentioned here, I loved that game.
Here is the question that is going around in my mind at the moment, about all Macromedia products as they stand right now but for arguments sake directed at Director here. How much life does Director MX 2004 have left in it? And by that I don’t mean how long before Adobe drop it, but how long before it stops becoming a viable solution for delivery of the kind of content you suggest above?
Much of my thoughts, or lack of them, concerning Macrodobe come purely form the fact that I am pretty low down in the food chain, in terms of what I do with Macromedia products, and in terms of the types of content I deliver on the web i.e. Text, Images and perhaps a bit of Flash once in a while. If I was looking for a worrying example it would be my almost complete dependence on Fireworks MX 2004 for design. If it vanished tomorrow, I would be in real trouble. At best I am intermediate with PhotoShop whilst Illustrator remains largely a mystery to me. And even if I look to a third party such as The Gimp, well The Gimp is a real mystery. With all that said I feel I have sufficient technology available here and now to allow me to do what I do for a number of years to come and with that in mind I feel I have a comfortable period of time to consider my options and re-tool if I need too. As I have said I am pretty low down in the food chain but I wonder if Sven feels a: that he has the luxury of a “comfort zone” so to speak and b: if Flash does continue to see heavy development, could it ever become a truly viable alternative to Director? And if so does he feel he has sufficient time to re-tool.
I hope that makes some sense anyway!
Thanks and apologies once more for my somewhat brash post yesterday.
3
...but I wonder if Sven feels a: that he has the luxury of a “comfort zone” so to speak and b: if Flash does continue to see heavy development, could it ever become a truly viable alternative to Director? And if so does he feel he has sufficient time to re-tool.
@ John: I think the answer to both your questions lies in the same answer, despite a certain percentage of reasonable doubt ofcourse :-)
Concerning the so-called “comfort zone”: I think I can fill it in with some webdesign, design and related activities but the only thing that bothers me the most is, that I am pretty sure I’m to stubborn to give in. I mean, when you love working with an application it won’t be easy to make that switch in my mind and say: “Hell yeah, we’ll do some other stuff instead”. This can be the answer to the second question too… But, again I must admit, I’ve been thinking about re-tooling a lot the past 2, 3 years. But I was never convinced, maybe this is the right time to do so ? Thinking this merge (or take-over if you like) will take some extra months to get all settled and stuff, so I think it is safe to state that there is plenty of time to re-tool. Furthermore it is easier to go from Director to Flash than vice-versa… Let’s wait and see what Adomedia has planned.
Sven
4
Found this interesting thought, posted on the Director-online forum by Indigo Kelleigh:
One interesting thing to note - the 3D engine that Intel developed as a successor to the one included with Dir 8.5 was supposedly bought by Adobe and integrated into their Atmosphere 3D development app. Now that both apps are inhouse at Adobe, it’s conceivable that Adobe will try to leverage their assets a bit. This could mean (finally) an upgrade to the 3D engine in Director, and a remarketing of Atmosphere as THE development tool for Dir3D Assets - if not completely building Atmosphere into Director itself. Also, Director could benefit from having a Photoshop-like bitmap editor (imageready, perhaps? or Photoshop elements?) built-in.
“Nil Desperandum” - I think :-)
Sven
5
myst was one big hypercard stack? that’s impressive.
It’d be a shame if adobe ends up killing director, because shockwave was way ahead of its time… back when it was first introduced, there were a million different plugins floating around (embedded midi files, anyone?) for the web, and outside of colleges and universities, 56k modems were the limit of connectivity. so with shockwave applets’ “huge” sizes of ~1MB, it dropped off the radar pretty quickly. I think I was still designing sites for 640x480 back then.
6
on a different but related note: QT. I keep wondering why Qt can’t be used more a la Flash; to build rich intenet media. Why can;t QT be used to embed flash-like Hyper-card like apps. I keep hoping that sometime soon
someone will come out with a cool QT development tool. LiveStage has been a disapointment… it’s too hard to learn. Anyone know about an easier way of making QT movies?
7
*sigh*
this takes me back.
thanks for the post!
lisa
8
As noted by John, a lot of attention is flowing towards Director and surely other apps might be on the Adobe chopping bloc. And allthough even Macromedia was unsure about Director until it released the MX 2004 version, let’s not rule Director out yet. As Ziepe clearly mentions there’s Adobe Atmosphere, which could be the future of Director and Shockwave 3D.
On the other hand, which was a rather simple matter a few years back, switching from one app to another (I switched from CyberStudio to Dreamweaver, from Director to Flash, from Quark to InDesign) as apps grow older and thus more complex this matter isn’t as simple anymore, i would not dream of having to switch from an app like Photoshop, which as milage goes is in the same league als Director.
However, guessing which apps will survive, which not is not the only thing one can consider. What is Adobe aiming at, what direction is it heading. Why did it choose to buy Macromedia. Look at the bigger picture, where does this put Adobe. A lot of online articles point at a possible clash between Adobe & Microsoft. I bundled a lot of these opinions on my personal weblog : silversurfer.be .
9
Flash and Director have been cannibalizing each other for years.. and unfortunately Director is the one that’s increasingly looking anorexic. If you look at the interfaces they’re now almost identical (I used to write director7 games, but never quite got the hang of flash and went back to programming ASP/PHP after changing jobs) – Though they’re almost the same they do dramatically different things.
That being said, there are still things that were easy to do in Director that are almost impossible with the limited power of action script in Flash. (Certain types of dynamic sprite creation for example)
This shouldn’t be a surprise, most DirectorMX books state in their opening pages that Director and Flash will eventually become one and the same (I’ve even got a director 6.5 book that says the same thing). But moving to flash (in my eyes) is a regression as opposed to an improvement. The 3d stuff is cool, but was initially too complicated, and way to slow; that was the point where I dropped out of the game, and the program lost a good chunk of momentum.
Flash is obviously designed for the graphic designer and Director was more of a programmer tool. I can’t help but feel that the great power of Director will be gimped, and the resulting combined product will add up to a sum less than the value of all its parts.
10
Hi,
Nice article - though it does seem very similar to the one publish at www.lingoworkshop.com/articles/history.php.
Anyway, lets hope Director doesn’t get lost in the shake up with Adobe.
11
@Luke, what do you want me to do? Rewriting Macromedia’s history? Those are the facts. Of course it is similar, it’s the same subject.
12
On the bright side, perhaps now Adobe will finally get a decent looking website :)
13
There are still many director users. The product will probably be used for the next decade matter what Adobes does with it. I just got a disk for the Chevrolet Impala. The whole thing was done in director. If GM uses director then it will survive for some time. I have yet to see a CD-ROM done in Flash MX.
14
Quoting Joe Jacksion ” I have yet to see a CD-ROM done in Flash MX.”
I know this im a little late but what the hell… You can create cds with flash with the help of 3rd party tools such as Zinc. You can basically do the same, if now more.
You can check it out @ www.multidmedia.com