MacroMind Shockwave originated with the VideoWorks application developed by
MacroMind for the original
Apple Macintosh. Animations were initially limited to the black and white of early Macintosh screens. VideoWorks was rebranded as Director 1.0 in 1987. Director 2.2 was released in 1988, and included the
Lingo scripting language with extensibility provided by
Xtras. A
Windows version was available in the early 1990s. Director 3.0 was the last version by MacroMind, and released in 1989 which introduced XObjects to Lingo.
Shockwave Player had still not been developed, and the sole means of publishing content remained generating executable applications.
Macromedia In 1992, MacroMind (now MacroMind-Paracomp) merged with Authorware Inc. and became
Macromedia. As the Internet became more popular, Macromedia realized the potential for a web-based multimedia platform, and designed
Shockwave Player for the leading
web browser of the time,
Netscape Navigator.
Shockwave Player was released with Director 4.0 around 1995, and branded Shockwave Player 1.0. Its versioning has since been tied to Director's versioning, skipping versions 2 to 4. Shockwave was now a two-part system, a graphics and animation editor known as
Macromedia Director, and a player known as
Macromedia Shockwave Player. Macromedia Director quickly became the de facto production tool for the multimedia industry. By 1993 it was used to develop most Macintosh CD-ROM games, such as
point-and-click graphic adventures. Macromedia acquired
FutureWave Software and its FutureSplash products.
Macromedia Flash 1.0 was released shortly thereafter. Macromedia now controlled two of the three leading multimedia platforms for the web, with
Java being the third. Macromedia Director 8.5 was released in 2001 and was the first version to specifically target the
video game industry. It introduced 3D capabilities, 3D text, toon shading,
Havok physics,
Real Video,
Real Audio, integration with
Macromedia Flash 5, behaviors, and other enhancements.
Adobe Macromedia was acquired by Adobe Systems in 2005, and the entire Macromedia product line including
Flash,
Dreamweaver,
Director/Shockwave, and
Authorware was now handled by Adobe. Director is currently developed and distributed by
Adobe Systems. The early 2000s saw a decline in the usage of Director/Shockwave as most multimedia professionals preferred
Macromedia Flash and other competing platforms. After the Adobe acquisition, no new versions were released for four years. In 2007, Adobe released Adobe Director 11, the first new release in four years. It introduced
DirectX 9 native 3D rendering and the
AGEIA PhysX physics engine, panel docking,
QuickTime 7 support,
Windows Media,
RealPlayer support,
Adobe Flash CS3 integration, and
Unicode support. It was considered an "incremental release" by reviewers and the scripting editor was still considered "primitive". As of 2008, the market position of Director/Shockwave overlapped with Flash to a high degree, the only advantage of Director being its native 3D capabilities. However, with the release of
Flash Player 11, GPU-based 3D rendering was now supported using
Stage3D (the underlying API),
Away3D or
Flare3D (3D game engines). And after
Adobe AIR was released, Flash programs could now be published as native applications, further reducing the need for Director. In February 2019, Adobe announced that Adobe Shockwave, including the
Shockwave Player, would be discontinued in April 2019. ==Xtras==