Browse all the entries under 3D Programming, Director, Shockwave 3D.

Browse all the entries under 3D Programming, Flash.

Browse all the entries under 3D Programming, Shockwave 3D.

Now that I’m back in the Director’s seat again, I’ve found even more online resources than I ever could before. Sample source code downloads abound. It’s as if my sudden re-opening of my mind to Shockwave 3D has made it easy for me to find an abundance of what I need. I used to scour the web for resources without finding this much. Yet, many of the resources I’ve effortlessly found lately have been around for some time. Particularly helpful to me is the Havok Developers Site Archive, which contains a wealth of demos and sample code downloads for the Havok Physics Xtra for Shockwave 3D. I don’t recall seeing this many when I played with Havok in the past. After having looked into other physics options, let me tell you, the Havok samples and documentation are very well done. It makes me sad that the business relationship between Macromedia and Havok went sour, back when Macromedia was still Macromedia. In spite of the lack of further development of the Havok Xtra since Director 8.5, Havok is still the best thing going, in terms of implementing physics for real-time 3D on the web. That is, unless you’re already an expert game programmer who’s proficient in Java. In that case, you may be able to do even better with Java. For everyone else, Havok is still the best we’ve got.

Another collection of resources I’ve learned a lot from, just by examining the lingo scripts, is the Tips section on the OS NonLinear Website, which belongs to the ingenious Lingo scripter, James Newton. I had never seen an example code snippet of working directly with vertices in Shockwave 3D, before seeing the source code for his MissVertex demo. His SnapToCap demo source code showed me an example of getting and working with points for the first time. It’s worth looking through his source code, even if you don’t need that specific piece of functionality, because you may see how to do something else. He’s got all kinds of custom behaviors in his movies.

If you don’t know your way around in Director yet, you’ll want to start with the basics before diving right into code samples. The best online Director tutorials I’ve ever found are Dean’s Director Tutorials and Resources. These are the tutorials I cut my baby teeth on. They are a lot of fun.

Browse all the entries under 3D Programming, Director, Shockwave 3D.

In my long and winding quest to do real-time 3D programming on the Web, I’m back where I started — with Shockwave 3D. Much as I love Sandy, I need at least joints and collision detection, and the only existing Flash physics engines are made for 2D. I’ve put considerable thought and effort into extending Flade (now replaced by APE) to 3D; but I’ve concluded that even if I succeeded, it would take some time for the code to mature. When I first started, I set out to learn Java 3D, but I soon abandoned it for Shockwave 3D. Then I abandoned Shockwave 3D for Flash, once Sandy came on the scene. In my naivety, I thought I could hack out a physics engine the same way I’ve always been able to hack out everything else I’ve needed. Once I learned how complicated physics engines and game engines are, I turned to the Torque Game Engine.

I’m Always Looking for Something Better – But Shockwave 3D Has Been Right in Front of Me All Along

Today, I finally realized that my real problem is that I’m continuously looking for something better, without sticking to one thing long enough to get it working. I feel sick at heart, at times, to think of all the time and effort I’ve wasted. It’s a very de-motivating feeling. But I perk up at the thought that I’ve got a lot of flexibility now. I can quickly choose to go in many different directions. Plus, I plan to use Torque Game Engine for CD content that I’ll ship with the Myth of Merula once I’ve published it in book form. As for Sandy, Flash has a future and Director probably doesn’t, so I’ll keep plowing away. It’s just that it will take some time. In the meantime, it just makes more sense to use Shockwave 3D rather than Torque. I wouldn’t even be able to display Torqe-created stuff on the Web. I can quickly get something working in Shockwave 3D at this point. I may as well do that, while I continue to work intermittently on getting Sandy to work with APE hacks. Who knows? Somebody may even release a 3D physics engine for Flash.

Knowledge Is Never Wasted

What’s even more encouraging to me is that my very formal and dry guide to 3D programming in Director, Director’s Third Dimension, now seems very easy to me. At this point, I don’t just know a tool. I know quite a bit about 3D programming, along with the basics of game physics programming. One thing I’ve learned is that, when it comes to 3D and game programming, it doesn’t matter if you learn some software and scripting; you still won’t be able to do much with it, if you don’t understand the basic underlying principles of how everything works. You won’t have any way of knowing what sorts of parameters to pass to functions, for one thing. Heck, you’ll have a hard time even knowing which functions to use, in the first place.

If Adobe Won’t Develop Director Any More, Why Not Let Us Develop It?

Still, all of this would be much simpler if Shockwave 3D would have a future. I wish that Adobe would shit or get off the pot, when it comes to the future of Director. In my opinion, if Adobe no longer intends to develop Director, Director’s code should be released to the community of Director enthusiasts, for us to maintain as an open source project. (Not that Adobe cares about my opinion.)

No Money in 3D on the Web?

Many people believe that the reason why Adobe appears to have abandoned both Atmosphere and Shockwave 3D is that there proved to be too little money in 3D on the Web. There is so little vision in that belief. I recall a small bookstore owner back in 1997 telling me that there was no money to be made on the web, pointing to Amazon.com to back up his statement. But realizing the inaccuracy of the no-money-in-Web-3D-belief doesn’t even require vision, since all you have do is to look at the phenomenon of Second Life. I’ll grant that if you’re a Shockwave 3D developer, you may not have experienced clients standing in line and beating down your door, but you’re just a person. You can’t afford to wait. A large corporation like Adobe can afford to grow a market. Adobe has deeper pockets than you have.

UPDATE 2/5/2007: I was pleased to read today, in Adobe’s Director and Shockwave Player Support FAQ, that Adobe plans to continue to develop Director. “Adobe has not published an official time frame for the next release of Director and generally does not disclose details of new releases more than 30 days before a product is expected to ship. However, our current planning assumption is that the next major release of Director will be in the second half of 2007 [emphasis mine].” Hooray! The last time I scoured the Director Website, I did not notice this. I don’t know how long it’s been up. Now I feel foolish about my above rant. Foolish but happy!

Browse all the entries under 3D Programming, Game Programming, Shockwave 3D.