Director and CDTV
11 messages in this thread
A friend is considering using The Director for some CDTV development work.
He told me he had heard that there was a CDTV module of some sort for it.
Is this true? (Or is it not needed?)
Also, this application would be used in a store and would need talk to a
MIDI device. Does the Director have support for controlling MIDI?
Thanks.
A CDTV module does exist, and in fact, I'll post it to the library section.
Note that the Projector must be licensed if used in a commercial CDTV
product, however, we have a reasonable policy that does not include a
per-unit fee, it's licensed similar to Commodore's Workbench license, a
yearly-fee-per-title.
MIDI output is already supported via the SMUS module if what you want is
musical sequencing. If you want the MIDI device to control The Director,
you'll need the MIDI module from ToolKit II (which hasn't been released
yet, but we are making portions of available to desperate customers for a
small fee). The MIDI module allows MIDI message input and the sending of
individual MIDI note messages from The Director which are not tied to a
musical sequence, but to other events that occur in your script.
Keith
Keith,
I am intrigued by the Director. I know it was used by Brad Schenck to
write the STITCHERY (which I now have). But I do not know what exactly it
is or whether it is a development tool purchasable by a hobby programmer
like me. Is it an object oriented programming package or what?
I am interested in trying to create a knitting design program for my
mother on the Amiga and wanted to explore the potential of the director for
minimizing the effort involved if, of course, it is available.
Tom Stevens From Toronto – via Whap!
Tom;
The Director is sort of the "C" language of presentation software. It does
the sort of things that AmigaVision or CanDo are used for but with closer
control. Director will let you manipulate the custom hardware directly (in
a system legal fashion of course).
It will allow you to do drawing (though not exactly handy for that sort of
thing). Its real power is that it will let you put iff images on part or
all of the screen, move them, fade or wipe between images, modify displays
based upon multiple images (boolean operations for instance) and operate on
user inputs.
It is a very powerful (if not the most powerful) presentation software that
exists.
BTW, I am not an employee, stock holder or the like. I am just a user that
had a sticky presentation development problem that the Director solved
quite well.
-bill/ARS KB7LX
More accurately, The Director is an integer BASIC with Amiga specific
extentions for handling multiple image buffers, doing BLIT, DRAW, polygon
graphics, Text handling, presentation transitions, sound effects and music,
and interactivity including button click and text input etc. As a simple
example, a script that will load an image, fade it in, and then tile the
screen with part of the image would look something like this:
SETBLACK ON
LOAD 1,"DH0:pictures/example"
FADE IN
PAUSE 20
RESOLUTION 1,xmax,ymax,depth :rem find out what res…
FOR x=0 TO xmax STEP 16
FOR y=0 TO ymax STEP 16
BLIT 1,0,0,x,y,16,16
NEXT
NEXT
PAUSE 40
FADE OUT
PAUSE 20
END
The LOAD command loads an IFF image into a numbered buffer (the 1
parameter) and then it can be referenced later as it is in the BLIT command
which specifies the source buffer and{associated source and destination
coordinates
The FADE command does what you'd expect, and there are plenty of other
commands that work similarly. Yo{ can adjust {he color pallete, the color
cycling ranges, load an ANIM and manipulate it frame by frame, specify text
arrays and manipulate and compare text strings, and read and write data
to/from disk.
Check out some of the examples in the library, such as the Dog Band demo{
whic{ includes the script as well. (you'll need the Projector and sound
modules as well as{ is specified in the demo's readme).
Keith
Keith; OK, maybe calling it the "C" language of "Presentation" software is
not a good idea. I used the term "C" rather than BASIC because like "C"
and unlike BASIC, there never seems to be anything that you can not do in
the Director. Of course calling it the "C" language of presentation
software also carries along the concept of cryptic and difficult to read
which is not the case for Director (and was not my intent).
It has been a long time since I have done anything with the Director. I
have not used 2.0 at all. Just been too busy with other things. There are
several things that I want to do with the Director and maybe in the near
future I will get to do them. Meanwhile, keep up the outstanding work (and
stick around incase I do something really stupid and can't figure out how
to correct it…. again).
-bill/ARS KB7LX
Thank-you for the reply, Bill. Just after I E-mailed that query about the
Director, I bougth the current issue of AmigaWorld and noted the article on
it there. It still puzzles me though that Brad Schenck used the Director to
create the Stitchery. It is one thing to hold and manipulate an image with
it. But he has created a piece of software which does that and which works
with the Projector. It is as if he has embedded a simplified Director
inside his program. Anyway, thanks again.
Tom Stevens From Toronto – via Whap!
Tom;
The Director itself is actually "like a compiler." The Projector, is a
distributable program that provides the runtime support for the "programs"
created with the Director. Most of us that have the director do not use
the projector except to make a final test to be sure that everything works
with the projector the same as with the Director.
Conceptually, the situation is similar to the idea of creating a program in
BASIC. As long as you are using interpreted BASIC, you can use the
program's functionality and still change the program itself. Once you
compile a BASIC program you are limited to just using the program's
functionality and are no longer able to modify the code.
-bill/ARS KB7LX
Thanks Bill,
I never thought of it as an interpreter situation. That ends my
puzzlement.
Tom Stevens From Toronto – via Whap!
Tom;
Well its not really an interpreter. Its more like the Director is a
compiler and has the run time support built in. The Projector provides
just the run time support.
-bill/ARS KB7LX
Bill,
OK. Thanks for the clarification.
Tom Stevens From Toronto – via Whap!