Flash vs. Director

[Mompariglia]

Greetings, can you please tell me the difference between Flash and Director?
It seems they're both aimed to create interactive content. I ask this because I have to choose a middleware: I'd like to develop a small 2d hex-based wargame, but I have no programming experience at all. The game I want to develop would have very very simple graphics, so I don't need Unreal 3 engine, but I need to implement multiplayer. Now the question you were waiting for: which one is the best for my needs: Flash or Director? or maybe Quest3d, which seems a very good environment but the manual lacks of content. Or maybe I should wait The games factory 2? I'll describe my game so that you can give me a hint:
2d top-down view
hex-based
turn-based, wego system (like in Combat Mission, the order are executed for both player at the same time)
multiplayer
Are Flash or Director capable to achieve high levels of interactivity?
I already have a design plan, and I know that every program I choose it will take 6 months to learn it, and 6 years to see the final game completed. I just have limited free time to learn a new program, so I can't learn both Quest3d and Flash for example.
Thanks
M

[bignobody]

Hi. I don't have much experience with Director (and no experience with Quest3d or games factory), but I do a lot of Flash work at my day job.

Flash is ideal for 2D stuff. I would say it's the way to go for you, especially for something turn based. Director is more like "flash on steroids" - more suited for real-time higher performance stuff. Of course, the trade off is a higher learning curve.

I'm not sure what you mean exactly by "capable to achieve high levels of interactivity", but from what you've described I think flash should be able to handle your needs.

Hope this helps,

[Mompariglia]

Hi bignobody, thanks for answering. With "high levels of interactivity" I mean: is Flash designed to make pinball style games, or also more complex games, like, let's say, TacOps4 (http://www.battlefront.com/products/tacops4/tacops4.html), which have simple 2d graphics but give total freedom to the player thanks to an incredible depth? you can have an idea of the "level of interactivity" I need. Also, how easy is to learn Flash? can we say Flash is a visual programming tool? or will I have to write code?
Thanks

[bignobody]

I'd say "yes" to everything ;)

Yes, flash is capable of making both a pinball game and more complex games as well. I haven't played TacOps4, but judging from the screenshots it looks like it could be well suited for a flash based game.

Yes, flash is a visual programming tool (Flash MX and later have a lot of "out of the box" components ready to use and extend) and yes, you will have to write some code.

The language used in Flash 5 and up is called Actionscript, and its complexity is on par with javascript.

Cheers,

[bignobody]

tacticsarena.com (http://www.tacticsarena.com/) is a nice example of what can be done in flash. Not sure how the server is implemented though...

[geon]

I personally hate Director. Might be because I had to use it in a school project. The version we had did'nt even support dynamic arrays.

[baldurk]

I don't know if it's an issue to you, but director currently doesn't have a port for linux. When considering something like flash which is almost intrinsically cross-platform, it is a step down. Whether you care or not is a different matter.

[Mompariglia]

Ok thanks guys, I'll start learning Flash :yes:
M

[0cool40]

i use director you can get a add on thay are called xtras that can put your game on a server if you like the game dark fall or amber thay where made with it im working on a myst like game , directoer has a time line that i find better for adding my stills and all i have to do is make a hot spot drag a behaver to it to tell it to go to the still i have on a numberd time line to go to the next frame makes the player feel like there moving in the world allso it has real time 3d just use 3dsmax then xport it to director.

[Hodge]

Depends on what you want, Director takes more knowledge. Director is ideal for more serious applications while flash is great for simple projects. Flash is more common and uses the actionscript language while Director is less common & uses the lingo language.
(My grammer sucks:wallbash: )