Adobe Director 12

OZApps

I tried out the Adobe Director 12 trial version, I had used MX last and that was around 2005 luckily (or not) I had some project files on some CD backups from then and I tried to open them...

1. The Windows version does not create any iOS projectors, where as the mac version creates a .ipa ready to be deployed to the device or the store as required.
2. My project was set at 800x600 which worked perfectly fine on the iPad and all of the lingo script worked perfectly fine with the touch

Point here is that while it is easy to create an app with windows and mac projectors, they are still basically a shockave project with a stub that plays it. The other issue is that a new copy is expensive however the upgrade price for US is $299 while it is $500+ for Australia and Adobe has controversies around the use of Director 12 with respect to payments, etc and the interface is still a very old, looks like aqua rather than carbon.

The thing we can take from this is the IDE to help with development and the compiled project which can be run using a stub on any of the platforms, windows, mac, unix, ios, android, etc.

Anybody else that tried Director 12 and have anything to add to this, something I missed?

ianchia

What? Director is *STILL* around? [shock /][faint /]

I just took at quick look at their product page http://adobe.com/products/director and their dev forum topics http://forums.adobe.com/community/director and their wholly messed up marketing messages re: iOS royalties.

eg. their official product page still mentions their wacky 10% iOS apps royalty scheme http://www.adobe.com/products/director.html

even though their discussion forums talk about Adobe backpedalling http://forums.adobe.com/message/5208634#5208634 and killing that.

As a really oldskool Director dev (http://hyperphonic.com/bio.txt if you're interested) - I would suggest that this new "push" by Adobe is not well supported within the company (much like Director) and the cynic in me thinks it will be crashy, buggy and Adobe support for iOS will be haphazard at best. Look at Flash - for Adobe's flagship product at the time, and provided a well resourced engineering team to create iOS output since 2010(ish?) - in 2013 we still have generally lacklustre performance and a very convoluted toolchain. Plus Kevin Lynch has jumped ship.

I wouldn't touch this with a 10 foot pole. But that's my $0.02. YMMV (-;

- Ian

OZApps

@ianchia, you are ex-adobe (I think). agree about all the issues around Adobe and Director, they are trying to milk it in any way they can.

Surprisingly the desktop product (IDE) is buggy and the iOS app created is not. When Adobe is losing customers, personnel and marketshare I guess it is only logical for them to grab whatever they can.

I was suggesting that the Interface and the technique was frame based and exactly right for visual development and the bundling of the final product, similar to Game Salad and some other frameworks that create a bundle and then their stub runs it, providing portability.

It was interesting reading your comments I was interested just to try and see how an old project would work on the iOS platform and it did well... including the game and touches.