Topic: Dynamic Multimedia applications with Macromedia Director

I?m a Director intermediate and I just finished my first CD-application in January. While producing, I used a fixed layout and ?copy-pasted? it across all director files. A change in the layout would have me changing every file one by one.

So I was wondering: When creating an application do you always use a fixed resolution and a fixed layout? How much room do you give the end-user for arranging and creating his own layout (like changing text size)? Like in a web browser I?d like to see director applications change its layout dynamically. Also the use of Style Sheets would save allot of time during production. Shockwave files can scale its size to a browser window ? is there something similar for projectors?

I think you might be a little out of luck here.

You can make applications that expand without "scaling" the media, but you'd have to program it all by hand I'm afraid. Although I've never actually tried this so it might not be possible at all. You may be able to fine an xtra that could do the job for you thought.

To that end, director isn't a application programming environment. It's a multimedia authoring environment, as such it focuses more on video and animation than it does on the idiosyncrasy of text and OS interface controls. Most Director developers creating CD-ROMs either used a fixed media size with the "full screen" option or simply change the users screen resolution to the required screen size. If you want to develop full blown 'applications', as opposed to multimedia productions, then perhaps you are using the wrong tool for the job.

Edit: Oops, where are my mannors, Welcome to the asylum Tuor!

[This message has been edited by Cameron (edited 02-29-2004).]

Thanks for the welcome!

I found out that it is possible to scale the stage size proportionaly to screen resolution. Here is the link: http://www.director-online.com/buildArticle.php?id=951

cheers,

tuor

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everything i've always seen when it comes to director work appears to scale the viewer's resolution to the appropriate screen size, seems like really the only way to control exactly how they're seeing the piece. i suppose running a fixed-size window would have a similar effect and be a bit less intrusive

chris


KAIROSinteractive

I believe there are ways to increase the stage size without scaling it. I've seen this done before with shockwave movies, but that may be only possible due to fact that the browser client can resize the plug-in.

This can be done in flash since version 6 (maybe 5, but don't quote me on it), yet I'm not really sure how you'd go about resizing an application window, and how the stage size will react to it. Although, there are various ways to control the stage, and I've used director to create a prototype strategy game that would resize to variable resolution without "scaling" or "stretching" anything. Similar to the way the age of empires games can be run in different resolutions.

But again, really not sure how'd you'd do it with a window. Perhaps if you created chrome less window (you?d have to coded all the resizing, dragging and close controls manually) then you probably could do it, as I've created chrome less splash windows and made them dragable around the desktop with some simple lingo code before, but resizing an actual native OS application window isn't part of directors default feature set. But I'd be surprised if there wasn't an xtra out there to do just that.

Dynamicly resizing the stage on load works well with shockwave 3D. I tested it today. Of course there is a performance hit but thats the way it is..

With Flash on the other hand, scaling an animated movie made everything very very slow. Even with "direct to stage" turned on. I guess the large performance difference betwenn shockave 3D and flash (when scaling both to the screen resolution) is the usage of the graphics card - SW3D can make much better use of the graphics hardware.

So, to make a long story short: scaling SW3D, cool - scaling Flash, not so cool

That depends on weather you scale the entire movie or just the stage (that being the flash stage, not the director stage, or perhaps both if you have flash embedded in director).

But you didn't mention anything about flash when you first posted this.