 | | | Director MX | Director MX 2003-12-06 - By Andy Phelps
Back
I will be responding in my own way to this as well. Thank you Darrel.
I **can** promise that at the least the folks working on the IGDA
reports this year *do* have a clue, and can evaluate in what I would
consider to be an educated manner. The innacuracies of the article in
GD lead me to believe that there was not a great deal of underlying
understanding. They will hear from me as well, although I doubt they
care much ;)
Cheers, and thanks again Darrel.
-A Phelps
RIT
Director - Shockwave - and Flash Game Production
<dirgames-l@(protected)> writes:
>Copy of the note I just sent to GD:
>
>-- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---
>
>Dear Editors:
>
>I'd like -- very respectfully -- to take issue with some of the items
>in Justin Lloyd's review of Macromedia Director MX ("Game Developer",
>December 2003).
>
>Mr. Lloyd makes some valid claims about problems with Director as a
>programming environment, particularly in areas where terminology
>developed over its two decades of development doesn't mesh with that
>of more traditional game development platforms, documentation, and
>bugs in the script editing window. However, I feel that some of his
>claims are simply due to unfamiliarity with the product.
>
>Macromedia's marketing department has indeed claimed that Director is
>a drag and drop environment, but I don't think it's ever claimed that
>everything could be done with drag and drop behaviors. The scope of
>those behaviors (I worked as a contract behavior developer on
>Director 7 and 8) was never intended to do everything for every user.
>They were intended for people putting together relatively simple
>projects, not games, which require a bit more sophisticated
>programming.
>
>Nor is there any need for "spaghetti code" when creating an interface
>with "20 or 30 buttons". Certainly, you _can_ do so, but that's true
>in almost any environment.
>
>It's true that the Lingo programming language has somewhere between
>one and two thousand keywords, but it's not necessary to "learn them
>all", as Mr. Lloyd claims.
>
>The Cast panel is described as having "no way to place cast members
>into logical groups" for large projects. Not only can a cast's member
>resources be sorted by media type in list display mode, but multiple
>casts can be created for organizing media. Cast members themselves
>can be moved around within an individual cast or to another cast.
>
>Director's timeline-oriented Score came in for some hits in Lloyd's
>review as well. However, most advanced Director developers use the
>Score sparingly. In fact, Director is flexible enough to let you skip
>the Score entirely and handle all of the interface through direct
>imaging to the window (through the use of imaging Lingo introduced in
>version 8). Some developers are using a single Shockwave 3D sprite
>for their interface.
>
>There is, admittedly, a steep learning curve for doing game
>development in Director. Mr. Lloyd claims that learning Lingo was
>harder than memorizing the Havok or DirectX SDKs. Maybe so, but those
>SDKs alone won't get you very far if you're unfamiliar with C, for
>instance. Nobody ever said making games was easy. For a certain level
>of game, Director can make it easier, but only if you spend some
>serious time learning the product.
>
>Director game developers like Gary Rosenzweig (www.clevermedia.com)
>and Brian Robbins (www.fuelindustries.com) have been speakers at
>recent Game Developer Conferences. There's a lively community of
>Director game developers at
>(nuttybar.drama.uga.edu/mailman/listinfo/dirgames-l), and the
>Director Online Users Group (www.director-online.com) of which I am
>the editor has many articles on game-related topics. Despite
>limitations that I think Mr. Lloyd and I could agree on, I'd
>encourage folks not to write Director off just yet.
>--
>-- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---
> Darrel Plant, Moshofsky/Plant Creative Services
>Multimedia Design by Brute Force (SM) http://www.moshplant.com
> phone/fax: 503-241-9082 dplant@(protected)
>__ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
>dirGames-L mailing list - dirGames-L@(protected)
>http://nuttybar.drama.uga.edu/mailman/listinfo/dirgames-l
__ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
dirGames-L mailing list - dirGames-L@(protected)
http://nuttybar.drama.uga.edu/mailman/listinfo/dirgames-l
Earn $52 per hosting referral at Lunarpages.
|
|
|