What's New in Director 8.5 > Using the Shockwave Multiuser Server and Xtra > Using the Shockwave Multiuser Server and Xtra overview |  |

Using the Shockwave Multiuser Server and Xtra overview

The Macromedia Shockwave Multiuser Server 3 and Xtra allow Director movies running in projectors or in Shockwave and Shockmachine to exchange information with other Director movies over the Internet or smaller networks. The Xtra and a 1000-user version of the server are included with the Director 8.5 Shockwave Studio. The Xtra is also included with Shockwave 8.5.

You can use the Multiuser Server and Xtra to do the following:

| Create a custom chat movie that allows real-time conversation.
| Hold an online meeting with a shared "whiteboard" that each participant can write on.
| Provide a shared presentation, allowing a presenter and an audience to all watch the presentation at the same time.
| Run a multiplayer interactive game.

Movies that use the Multiuser Xtra can exchange information in three basic ways:

| By sending it to the Shockwave Multiuser Server, which then sends it on to the movie or movies it is intended for.
| By establishing peer-to-peer connections directly with other movies.
| By connecting to a text-based server such as a standard mail or Internet Relay Chat server. In order to communicate with a text-based server, you must be familiar with the commands the server understands. You can send these commands to the text-based server in the same way you send other messages.

The Shockwave Multiuser Server and Xtra are two separate components that work together to enable multiuser movies. The server is a separate application that runs on a separate computer. The server can also be run on the same computer as the Director application during development of your movies. The Multiuser Xtra checks messages for errors, prepares them for passage over the network, and then sends them to the server. The server then determines whom the message was intended for and sends it to the appropriate recipient(s). The recipient's Xtra gets the message from the network so that it can be used by the movie.

When using the server, movies can communicate with other instances of the same movie connected to the server (such as a chess movie exchanging player-move information with other instances of the chess movie), or with different movies (such as a chess movie exchanging chat messages with a checkers movie in a virtual game room).

The types of messages your movie sends depends on what you want the movie to do. Movies can share all the types of data that Lingo supports, including strings, integers, floating-point numbers, colors, dates, points, rects, lists, 3D vectors, and 3D transforms. In addition, cast members may be exchanged by using the `media` or `picture of member` cast member properties. This enables chat movies to share pictures of the participants, or collaborators to share diagrams, for example.

As a Lingo Xtra, the Multiuser Xtra extends Lingo by adding new commands and other elements to the Lingo vocabulary. The Xtra is used by writing Lingo scripts that include these commands. The multiuser behaviors included in Director's Behavior Library provide all of the functionality that a basic chat application requires.

In addition to simply passing information from movie to movie, the Shockwave Multiuser Server also provides functions that make it easier to create rich and complex multiuser experiences:

| You can store and retrieve information such as user names or profiles in databases.
| You can create groups in order to organize users in logical ways, such as opposing teams in an adventure game.
| You can assign attributes to those groups, such as a team's score.
| You can send messages directly to the server to get information about the server and the other movies connected to it.
| You can access text files on the server and make use of their contents.
| You can add Lingo scripts to the server that provide server-side logic and multithreading to support your multiuser movies.