ABSTRACT
Flash or Director? Because you are reading this book, you obviously feel that Director has some benefits that make learning how to use the tool worthwhile. Some Flash developers are more sceptical, feeling that there is nothing in Director that cannot be done in Flash; some Director developers feel the opposite.The truth, as always, is somewhere in the middle. Flash makes creating a custom interface very easy, but it’s not great with bitmaps and it cannot handle real-time 3D. Director is good for combining media created in many development environments, video, 3D and Flash, and it is very good at handling bitmaps fast. If you are creating a game that makes extensive use of bitmaps then Director is likely to be a better choice than Flash.Creating a custom interface in Director can often be more difficult than in Flash, which has multiple timelines that make simple things, like revealing a button, much easier to develop. But Flash cannot embed another technology readily, although Flash MX 2004 Professional has introduced the ability to add an extension. Later in this book we will see how you can use Director to create real-time 3D games; this single feature alone makes the game developer want to learn to use Director. Nevertheless, Flash is terrific for many things and so learning how to incorporate it into your movie is well worth the trouble.
