Adobe Shockwave (formerly Macromedia Shockwave and MacroMind Shockwave) is a discontinued

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradit ...

platform for building interactive multimedia applications and

video games Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This feedbac ...

. Developers originate content using

Adobe Director Adobe Director (formerly Macromedia Director, MacroMind Director, and MacroMind VideoWorks) was a multimedia application authoring platform created by Macromedia and managed by Adobe Systems until its discontinuation. Director was the primary edi ...

and publish it on the Internet. Such content could be viewed in a

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used o ...

on any computer with the

Shockwave Player Adobe Shockwave Player (formerly Macromedia Shockwave Player, and also known as Shockwave for Director) is a discontinued freeware software plug-in for viewing multimedia and video games created on the Adobe Shockwave platform in web pages. ...

plug-in installed.

MacroMind MacroMind was an Apple Macintosh software company founded in Chicago in 1984 by Marc Canter, Jamie Fenton and Mark Stephen Pierce. The company's first product was SoundVision, a combined music and graphics editor. Before the release, the graphic ...

originated the technology;

Macromedia Macromedia, Inc., was an American graphics, multimedia, and web development software company (1992–2005) headquartered in San Francisco, California, that made products such as Flash and Dreamweaver. It was purchased by its rival Adobe System ...

acquired MacroMind and developed it further, releasing Shockwave Player in 1995.

Adobe Adobe ( ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for '' mudbrick''. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is used to refer to any kind of ...

then acquired Shockwave with Macromedia in 2005. Shockwave supports

raster graphics upright=1, The Smiley, smiley face in the top left corner is a raster image. When enlarged, individual pixels appear as squares. Enlarging further, each pixel can be analyzed, with their colors constructed through combination of the values for ...

, basic

vector graphics Vector graphics is a form of computer graphics in which visual images are created directly from geometric shapes defined on a Cartesian plane, such as points, lines, curves and polygons. The associated mechanisms may include vector display ...

, 3D graphics,

audio Audio most commonly refers to sound, as it is transmitted in signal form. It may also refer to: Sound *Audio signal, an electrical representation of sound *Audio frequency, a frequency in the audio spectrum * Digital audio, representation of sou ...

, and an embedded scripting language called

Lingo Lingo, a contraction of language, often refers to jargon, but in a less formal or technical sense. Lingo may also refer to: Technology * Lingo (programming language), one of several unrelated programming languages * Lingo (VoIP Service operator ...

. During the 1990s, Shockwave was a common format for CD-ROM projectors, kiosk presentations, and interactive video games, and dominated in interactive multimedia. Various

graphic adventure game An adventure game is a video game genre in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and/or puzzle-solving. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based m ...

s were developed with Shockwave then, including '' The Journeyman Project'', ''

Total Distortion ''Total Distortion'' is a 1995 full motion video adventure game for Mac and Windows, developed by Pop Rocket. Gameplay The gameplay has the player as a music video entrepreneur in the "Distortion Dimension", a place where they fight "Guitar Wa ...

'', '' Eastern Mind: The Lost Souls of Tong Nou'', ''Mia's Language Adventure'', ''Mia's Science Adventure'', and the ''

Didi & Ditto Didi & Ditto is an edutainment software series created in 2003 by Kutoka Interactive. The series consists in three grade-based titles for preschool (ages 2 to 4), kindergarten (ages 4 to 6) and first grade (ages 5 to 7). Gameplay After the ...

'' series.

Video game developer A video game developer is a broad term for a software developer specializing in video game development – the process and related disciplines of creating video games. A game developer can range from one person who undertakes all tasks to a large ...

s developed hundreds of free online video games using Shockwave, publishing them on websites such as Miniclip and Shockwave.com. In July 2011, a survey found that Flash Player had 99% market penetration in desktop browsers in "mature markets" (United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand), while Shockwave Player claimed only 41% in these markets.

Adobe Flash Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a multimedia software platform used for production of animations, rich web applications, desktop applications, mobile apps, mobile games, and embedded web browser video players. Flash ...

and

Adobe AIR Adobe AIR (also known as Adobe Integrated Runtime and is codenamed Apollo) is a cross-platform runtime system currently developed by Harman International, in collaboration with Adobe Inc., for building desktop applications and mobile applic ...

are alternatives to Shockwave, with its 3D rendering capabilities, object-oriented programming language, and capacity to run as a native executable on multiple platforms.Adobe Director 11 review
, Page 2, KEVIN PARTNER, 1 May 2008, PCPro Magazine, ''"Adobe's AIR technology makes it possible to deploy Flash as a desktop application"'' In February 2019, Adobe announced that Adobe Shockwave, including the Shockwave Player, would be discontinued effective April 9, 2019.

History

MacroMind

Shockwave originated with the VideoWorks application developed by

for the original

Apple Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software ...

. Animations are 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 Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for se ...

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.

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

. As the Internet became more popular, Macromedia realized the potential for a web-based multimedia platform, and designed

for the leading

of the time, Netscape Navigator.

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 Point and click are the actions of a computer user moving a pointer to a certain location on a screen (''pointing'') and then pressing a button on a mouse, usually the left button (''click''), or other pointing device. An example of point and c ...

graphic adventures. Throughout the 1990s Director was credited with the creation of the majority of educational CD-ROMs. It was preferred over competing applications due to its range of features, relative ease of use and Director's ability to publish executables for both

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus '' Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancest ...

and

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...

operating systems. A less-sophisticated alternative to Director was Apple's HyperCard. From 1995 to 1997 a competing multimedia authoring program appeared called (from ). In 1997, was purchased and discontinued by Quark, Inc., who had its own plans into multimedia authoring with Quark Immedia. In November 1996, 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 Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...

being the third. Macromedia Director 8.5 was released in 2001 and was the first version to specifically target the

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This feedba ...

industry.Macromedia Director 8.5 Shockwave Studio
CreativeMac Reviews, AUGUST 1, 2001, David Nagel It introduced 3D capabilities, 3D text, toon shading, Havok physics, Real Video, Real Audio, integration with Macromedia Flash 5, behaviors, and other enhancements. 3D modelling programs such as LightWave,

Cinema 4D Cinema 4D is a 3D software suite developed by the German company Maxon. Overview As of R21, only one version of Cinema 4D is available. It replaces all previous variants, including BodyPaint 3D, and includes all features of the past 'Studio' ...

, and 3D Studio Max were upgraded to export 3D models for Shockwave. As of 2001, over 200 million people had the Macromedia Shockwave Player installed, making Shockwave a common format for online video games. Websites such as Miniclip and Shockwave.com were dedicated to Shockwave and Flash-based video games.Miniclip English Games
Shockwave and Flash-based video games

Adobe

Macromedia was acquired by Adobe Systems in 2005, and the entire Macromedia product line including Flash,

Dreamweaver Adobe Dreamweaver is a proprietary web development tool from Adobe Inc. It was created by Macromedia in 1997 and developed by them until Macromedia was acquired by Adobe Systems in 2005. Adobe Dreamweaver is available for the macOS and Windo ...

, Director/Shockwave, and

Authorware Adobe Authorware (previously Macromedia Authorware, originally Authorware) was an elearning authoring tool with its own interpreted, flowchart-based, graphical programming language. Authorware was used for creating interactive elearning programs ...

was now handled by Adobe. Director and Shockwave Player is currently developed and distributed by

Adobe Systems Adobe Inc. ( ), originally called Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American multinational computer software company incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in San Jose, California. It has historically specialized in software for the cre ...

. The early 2000s saw the 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 Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with "Direct", ...

native 3D rendering and the AGEIA PhysX physics engine, panel docking,

Quicktime QuickTime is an extensible multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, picture, sound, panoramic images, and interactivity. Created in 1991, the latest Mac version, QuickTime X, is a ...

7 support,

Windows Media Windows Media is a discontinued multimedia framework for media creation and distribution for Microsoft Windows. It consists of a software development kit (SDK) with several application programming interfaces (API) and a number of prebuilt techn ...

, RealPlayer support, Adobe Flash CS3 integration, and

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...

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 Stage3D ( codenamed ''Molehill'') is an Adobe Flash Player API for rendering interactive 3D graphics with GPU-acceleration, within Flash games and applications. Flash Player or AIR applications written in ActionScript 3 may use Stage3D to rend ...

(the underlying API), Away3D or

Flare3D Flare3D is a framework for developing interactive three-dimensional ( 3D) graphics within Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR, written in ActionScript 3. Flare3D includes a 3D object editor (the Flare3D IDE) and a 3D graphics engine for rendering 3D ...

(3D game engines). And after

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

, would be discontinued in April 2019.

Xtras

Xtras are plug-ins for the Lingo scripting language, that enable additional functionality into a Shockwave project. Xtras are typically used to add file system I/O, hardware integration, and advanced multimedia functions. Xtras are supported and available for

, Adobe Authorware and Adobe Freehand. Many of Director's own functions are implemented as Xtras. Xtras use the Macromedia

Open Architecture Open architecture is a type of computer architecture or software architecture intended to make adding, upgrading, and swapping components with other computers easy. For example, the IBM PC, Amiga 500 and Apple IIe have an open architecture supp ...

which was designed to allow easy creation of interchangeable components between Macromedia products. Adobe maintains a list of third party Xtras. Xtras for Microsoft Windows (32-bit) have an file extension. Xtras for

Mac OS Two major famlies of Mac operating systems were developed by Apple Inc. In 1984, Apple debuted the operating system that is now known as the "Classic" Mac OS with its release of the original Macintosh System Software. The system, rebranded "M ...

generally have an extension. The file extension * is reserved for Xtras for Microsoft Windows (16-bit).

References

External links

Adobe Shockwave Player
* {{Adobe Systems 1995 software

Shockwave In physics, a shock wave (also spelled shockwave), or shock, is a type of propagating disturbance that moves faster than the local speed of sound in the medium. Like an ordinary wave, a shock wave carries energy and can propagate through a med ...

Animation software Computing platforms

Graphics file formats Macintosh multimedia software MacOS multimedia software

Multimedia frameworks Obsolete technologies Windows multimedia software Video game development software