What is the difference between Shockwave and Flash?

[Goosey]

I know Flash is built from flash, and Shockwave from director. I know that Shockwave is compiled while Flash is interprited (right?), and I know that flash was designed specifically for the Web and Shockwave has been around much longer then that (and was designed for multimedia CD's right?)... But

What really is the difference between them at the technical level?

[jaybee]

I have been meaning to get into director for a long time, but it's just so much less, well, fun than flash! The fact is tho that director is still a very attractive package cos it does a lot of stuff very easily that is hard work or totally unfeasible in flash cos of the limitations of the player, even tho things like video are now available to mx...

it's good at building heavy duty multimedia apps & projectors and games - because the player is so much bigger and more robust it can handle whatever you throw at it (though this is theory for me), and do things like native 3d rendering that are beyond the flash player. This makes it suitable for no limits games development, where flash is never likely to be. It has inbuilt "cast members", like assets in the library, that allow drag and drop construction of chat apps and multiplayer games, comparable to FlashComm Server, but which seems to run much more "out of the box" - following a tute on the web I made a chat app in about 30 minutes, and as extensible as the flashcomm set up may be, it takes lot's of coding and as experience....

Lingo, the director scripting language, seems very ungainly and disorganised/weird structure, it's the biggest thing that puts me off director but maybe it just takes time to get into it. One of the big differences is Xtras, which extend the functionality of the player, allowing stacks of things like access to the client system for desktop projectors, stuff that flash developers would love but can only be done via third party apps like swfstudio. If the client has never downloaded that Xtra they are prompted to do so, or I think some can be bundled with the .dir

and then there's the cost:rolleyes:

[flavoredthunder]

Hi I have been a director developer for the last six years. There is a lot of difference between flash and director. But here are the most important i think
1. Flash is vector based Director is bitmap based
2. Flash will compile for both platforms, director can only compile for the platform that the application is running on.
3. Director can be extended using XTRAS (bits of code written in C++ that plugs into director)
4. Director can do lots of real-time image effects by drawing directly to the stage.
5. Director allows you to write files to the system, read files from the system and do lots of other system calls.
6. Director has a huge 3d engine built right in, flash does not.
7. Director is built around the BASIC programming language (like VB) and flash is a J2EE complient language (like JAVA)

Hope that helps,
Good Luck!

[Ricod]

I used Director a couple of times at my old school ... I don't know if they changed it by now, but what annoyed me about Director was "no multiple timelines" ! I missed my mc's right away. *sighs* Wish Flash had a 3d engine though ...

[flavoredthunder]

Yeah you don't need multi-timeslines in director. I bet that i can duplicate anything that you can do in flash with director (except certain flash only elements)

[Ricod]

I don't doubt it. :D

Just habit I guess. Used to thinking in a certain manner. A switch like that is bound to go a little awkward at first. :(

[Goosey]

well you can embed flash movies inside director right? So this pretty much means you can do anything in flash in director just by doing it in flash first ;)

[JerryH]

Out of interest, can Director communicate with external databases? If so, how? Is there a means for interfacing VB code (or C++ code) with Director? If so is it two way.

I presume that Director can grapple with Xml and from there to something to handle databases transactions, but i downloaded the Director manul over the weekend and there was almost nothing onthe externl world.

Thanks for any help.

[flavoredthunder]

yes there are several database XTRAs that you can install in director that will interface with just about anything that you want. What type of databases are you interested in?

[JerryH]

Databases: Access and SQL Server. I couldn't find much (nearly nothing) in the Director manual I downloaded about its API. Is there any other doc around?

[flavoredthunder]

actually, if you are talking about online databases then you have two options.
1. Use some sort of bridge with a CGI writen in PHP or PERL
2. Use the Multi-User Server to open a socket connection to the server as you would a telnet session.

[Sir Patroclo]

Hi:
Now that we're talking Director here, does anyone knows of a site as good as this but about Lingo and Director? with newbie-to-pro tutorials and stuff?

Thanks

Sir Patroclo

[flavoredthunder]

This is the best site out there for learning director. There are over 6 years of tutorials on the site, including tutorials by yours truely :)
Director-online (http://www.director-online.com)

Hope it helps.
Mark

[Ricod]

And a couple more here. (http://www.actionscript.org/forums/showthread.php3?s=&threadid=23711)