Brennan's MIAW Tools
For Macromedia Director

This page is devoted to tools I have created in pure Lingo for Macromedia Director. In every case they are tools which filled a need which I had, so I know that they are useful at least to those people who use Director in a similar fashion to me. All the tools are freeware but no guarantees are provided with them. Bugs, suggestions and fawning adulation can be sent to me at brennan@young.net. They may be distributed freely as long as they are distributed exactly as they are downloaded here, i.e. the readme and any additional files must be included. None of these tools may be distributed for profit, except by arrangement with me.

These tools are intended to extend the Macromedia Director 6 (or higher) authoring environment and are of limited use in finished products. To use them, unpack the downloaded file (either zip or binhexed stuffit archives) and drag them into the Xtras folder of your Director application. Next time you start Director, you will see them in the Xtras menu.

After listing my own tools, there are also some links to places where you can download other MIAW tools.

Go Up to my Comp page.

RegPoint Tweaker This tool is invaluable in situations when you are required to change the registration points of bitmap cast members. Of course it is simple to use the mouse to do this in the paint window, but often one wants to set the registration point to (for example) the top left, the centre right or some such. Doing this by hand is tricky and time consuming. It becomes further complicated when you want to set the registration point to a specific offset from the centre or from a corner or edge. After writing several utility handlers with repeat loops to achieve this task on various occasions, I decided to wrap the functionality up in a MIAW tool. This tool will allow you to adjust registration points easily with the added advantage that it can be applied to multiple bitmaps.

Download .zip archive Download .sit.hqx archive

The four corners, the centres of the edges and the absolute centre are presented as 'pre programmed' settings. Additionally, the regpoint can be 'tweaked' in a way modelled on Director's own sprite location Tweak tool by specifying an offset and clicking the 'Tweak' button. The latest version works around a bug in Director7, 7.02 and 8.0 and includes two cool improvements suggested by Mark 'Markie' Castle; "Tweak Absolute" and "Capture regPoint" to enhance your regpoint Tweaking pleasure. The windowtype depicted in the screenshot is no longer available in Director 7. The tool has now been fixed so that it still has a 'Windoid' type on Mac, althought the drag bar is now at the top. The drag bar will still be at the side on D6 Mac. The downloadable archive now also contains an alternative version with a side drag bar. This was custom made by Warren 'The Howdy Man' Ockrassa after a bit of lukewarm banter about window types on Direct-L. Warren is, or was for some time, a worryingly full time Director discussion group hound and purveyor of fine things from n i g h t w a r e s Take your pick after the download.

The Stringler This tool is invaluable in situations when you need to make a Lingo function which returns a long, hardcoded string containing double quote characters and carriage returns. The most common use I make of this tool is to generate getBehaviorDescription handlers to document behaviors and other scripts. Clipboard operations are supported. Existing function handlers with the same name as the one generated are commented out. A mouseclick shortcut streamlines the process of editing an existing handler.

Download .zip archive Download .sit.hqx archive

GPDLTool

Director's behaviors have brought powerful Object Oriented Programming techniques within reach of even beginner users and have speeded up the OOP process for power users. If you do not know anything about properties, behaviors and objects, try this link. The getPropertyDescriptionList handler allows behaviors to be easily configured with dialog boxes, but in itself it is complicated and difficult to type accurately. The GPDL tool has been developed for this purpose. I am certain that this tool will increase productivity amongst OO Lingo programmers because I have spent so much time trying to remember the correct [ and : and #, let alone having problems with commas and continuation characters. I have been using it a lot so it is somewhat "combat tested". The improvements in version 1.1 are based on my own needs and the little feedback I got from version 1.0. The latest version fixes a windotype shortcoming in Director 7 and later (see above about 'windoids' under regpoint tweaker). I'll be the first to admit that there are some more complete tools to do this job, I particularly recommend Felix Guerrero's Behavior Maker which provides a full set of handlers and property settings. Nice one Felix! Download .zip archive Download .sit.hqx archive

Coming very soon...

Media Hacker: Hack the media out of protected movies. Some politics here. Well, it's for educational and emergency use only.
If you plan to use it for other purposes you are a lazy swine, and you will probably 'get caught' because it's extremely hard to pass off someone elses media as your own.
ReleaseCandidate available now: zip archive sit.hqx archive.

SpacedOut: Arrange sprites on the stage so they are equidistant from one another.

Memnamonic: Name your cast members automatically with numbered prefixes or suffixes.

Other MIAW Tools extant.

Please send me information about any MIAW tools not listed here.

J Bennet's Tools

Stage Manager $20
Nice tool to arrange sprites on the stage.

Global Manager $10

Code Counter $5
Come on Mr Bennet. $5 for this?
Well, dear reader, If you have so many lines of code that you actually need to count them, save your money and write a handler to do this job.

OH! I happen to have one right here:

on countcode clib
  set c to 0
  repeat with n = 1 to the number of members in castlib clib
    if the type of member n of castlib clib = #script then
      set c to c + the number of lines in the scripttext of member n of castlib clib
    end if
  end repeat
  put c
end

Dave Mennenoh

A new collection of interesting freeware tools whose source is open, so you can prod about inside. There are also some other useful things to download at this site, particularly a page describing different sorting algorithms and their relative speeds in Lingo.

Capture - a utility to capture scripted animations as still images. Ideal for conversion to Quicktime.

DAlign - a new and alternative alignment tool inspired by the one in Flash

lowrcase - a utility to convert the case of a bunch of files

shadow - a tool for making drop shadow effects with sprites

W!d's RTF Tools

Excellent tools for serious manipulation of richText members in Director 6. All freeware.
Of particular interest is rtfAbuse, which opens the richText alpha channel to use with bitmaps. Actually these tool seem to be unavailable, but Pim is still going strong. He's a very pleasant fellow. Maybe if you email him he'll send you the tools. If you are using Director7 or later you wont need them.

rtfAbuseTool (Mac only)

rtfAdjustTool

rtfTool

Behavior Maker

By Felix Guerrero
Very good! Offers similar output to GPDL but has a much richer user interface. Freeware.

Behavior Writer

By Roy Pardi $ ?
Also like GPDL but more complete and done with style.

Join The Multimedia Revolution

From this site a number of nice freeware MIAW tools can be acquired. Look under 'ressources/Director' and you'll find

JTMR Property Inspector

JTMR Behavior Maker (Yet another one of these. Neccessity is the mother of invention, Macromedia!)

JTMR Sound Inspector

JTMR Member Renamer (This is quite useful, although I'm going to make one too.)

JTMR Img2Txt - Quirky little utility which converts bitmaps into ASCII art using tonal values to enhance the effect. A bit special.

Director Developer's Toolkit

By Alex Zavatone
Lots of diagnostic and montitoring tools on CD- $200.00

PS2VS

By Darrel Plant - Freeware
A very useful tool for converting encapsulated postscript files into Director7 single path vector shape cast members or Director 8 multiple path cast members. Essential.

Cropper

By Christian Wach - Freeware
Why has nobody thought of this already? A simple idea, neatly executed: Crop your bitmaps with a marquee. No messing about.