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Zeus Tech Note

Director 6 FAQ

Copyright © 1997. Zeus Productions. All Rights Reserved.
Written by Bruce A. Epstein
(This page last revised October 26, 1997)

What's new in Director 6?

See the TechNote, "New Director 6 Features"

New features include:

Integrated Shockwave Support
New Score, featuring Sprite Spans and Behaviors
120 Sprite Channels
Enhanced MOA and Xtras Support
Bundled Xtras for local Projectors
See the TechNote, "Where Did It Go? Director 6 for Director 5 Users"
See the TechNote, "Director 6 Annoyances"

Director 6.0 for Macintosh: 68K Development; PowerPC Development; 68K Projectors; PowerPC Projectors; Fat Projectors
Binary-File Compatibility for Mac and Windows
Director 6.0 for Windows: Windows 95/NT (32-bit) Development only; No Windows 3.1 Development Environment; Windows 3.1 (16-bit Projectors); Windows 95/NT (32-bit Projectors)
Binary-File Compatibility for Mac and Windows

What happened to the Windows 3.1 (16-bit) support?

Director no longer supports development under Windows 3.1, but it does support playback under Windows 3.1, or in 16-bit mode under Windows 95. It is not ideal, but it is better than nothing, and Macromedia has shifted away from Windows 3.1, as Microsoft no longer actively supports it.

Are 68K Mac and PowerPC development still supported?

Yes, same as Director 5.

What happened to the FileIO Xobject?

Where Did It Go? Director 6 for Director 5 Users

Can Xtras be bundled into the projector?

Director 6.0 supports bundling Xtras with the Projector. (Director 5.0 does not) Under Windows, the Xtras are unbundled dynamically at runtime into a temporary folder. You cannot bundle Xtras with a downloadable Shockwave movie.

Why does my Director 6 Windows 3.1 (16-bit) projector give an "Invalid Projector File <path>" error on some Windows 3.1 Machines?

If you plan to ship a projector for Win 3.1 made with Dir 6, you must make the projector read-only to avoid hard-crashing. (Thanks to Tom Goodman of Tenth Planet for this tip)

Tom writes:

When you try to run a Director 6 projector on a Win 3.1 machine that has SHARE.EXE running as a TSR, you get the error "Invalid Projector File <path>". When SHARE.EXE is REM'd from the autoexec.bat and the machine is restarted, it works fine. VSHARE.386, the drop-in replacement for SHARE.EXE, seems to work fine with projectors on Win 3.1 machines. When VSHARE is running, there is no problem, whether or not SHARE is loaded.

This does not seem to be an issue when running a 16-bit projector under Windows 95, nor when running on all Windows 3.1 machines, depending on the configuration. It may run on Windows 3.1 machines over a network, but not when run locally from 3.1 machine.

How do I view available Behaviors?

Open the Behavior Inspector, using Window>Inspectors>Behaviors. Choose Xtras>Behavior Library. Hilight a behavior in the Behavior Library, and it will show up in the Behavior Inspector. Use the arrows in the Cast Window to cycle among behaviors.

...much more to come.....