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

Creating multiuser movies

To create a multiuser experience, you must design a movie that connects to the server or directly to another movie and then sends and receives messages that contain the information needed for the movie to function. For example, you might design a chat movie that connects to the server and then allows each user to send text messages and pictures to all users of the chat movie or to specific users. Or you might design a Ping-Pong game that has two people connect to the server and then sends messages describing the location of each user's paddle and score.

For an example of the Lingo used to connect to the server, see the example Director movies in the Director 8.5/Learning/Lingo_examples/Multiuser_examples folder.

You use Lingo to control how a movie makes connections and handles messages. For those who want to avoid writing their own Lingo, Director includes several behaviors that perform tasks such as making server connections, sending chat messages, and creating a shared whiteboard. For information on using these behaviors, see the Multiuser section of Director's Library palette and its accompanying tooltips.

The following sections describe how to write custom Lingo for managing multiuser connections.

The server manages movies, groups and users. Here the Chat name movie contains one group with four users. The Chess Game movie contains two groups, one for each game, each with two users.