MTropolis
Encyclopedia
mTropolis was an award-winning, open-architecture multimedia programming application aimed at enabling rapid development of multimedia
titles. It was developed by mFactory and introduced in 1995. It introduced object-oriented concepts such as reusable objects, modifiers and behaviors into the multimedia authoring space dominated by Macromedia
's Director software. mTropolis was bought in 1997 by Quark
, which moved development from Burlingame, California
to Denver
and then cancelled the product one year later. Despite efforts by its fervent users to attempt to save their investment and beloved tool, negotiations and even a possible purchase offer never came to fruition. http://archive.salon.com/21st/feature/1998/06/10feature.html
multimedia product space dominated in the 1990s by Macromedia Director
. The software's maker, mFactory , founded in 1992, variously positioned mTropolis as an alternative and as an adjunct to Director.
mTropolis was short-lived, being bought by Quark
in 1997, who then discontinued the product a few months later, possibly in favor of QuarkImmedia
. The use of behaviors in mTropolis spurred Macromedia
on to introduce behaviors in Director 6.0.
While multimedia CD-ROM authoring has largely been rendered irrelevant by online content distribution, mTropolis remains an interesting study in application design, and held a loyal following for many years.
's HyperCard
and others had a card based metaphor, and Macromedia Director had a film metaphor (the content area is called The Stage, the time line The Score, an assets library named The Cast, etc). In mTropolis there were sections, subsections, and scenes. Assets would be placed onto the scene, and then combinations of behaviors and modifiers would be dragged onto the assets
Powerful interaction and animation could be created by making different modifiers send messages to each other, allowing a user to create something impressive fairly quickly, without any typing. There was a simple programming language, accessed via a Miniscript modifier, but most of the programming was achieved by attaching standard behaviors and modifiers, and making selections within the modifier pop-up menus.
author Douglas Adams
, his team had originally selected mTropolis 1.0 for its development platform but it had to be abandoned for unspecified technical insufficiencies in favor of an in-house tool.http://www.starshiptitanic.com/game/mac.html
metaphor, mFactory engineers intentionally omitted control constructs such as conditional loop
s. To remedy such limitations, the third-party developer AX Logic produced the commercially-available Alien Studio modifier as a drop-in replacement for Miniscript.
, dubbed mPire, exposed a core architectural shortcoming. The binary file format was not cross-platform; in order to make a mTropolis element available for embedding on a web page, the author was required to save a Macintosh version and a separate Windows version. Hence the web server had to store redundant copies of the same content, consuming disk space and necessitating the use of loader pages to serve the file appropriate for the end user's operating system.
. Retail price $4,495.
1.0. Retail price $1,195.
October 1996: mFactory releases beta 1 of the mPire browser plug-in.
May 1997: Quark, Inc. purchases mFactory.
March 1998: Quark announces that v2.0 would be furnished free-of-charge to registered mTropolis v1 customers, but that the product will not be made available for general purchase.http://denver.bizjournals.com/denver/stories/1998/03/30/story5.html
s were created using mTropolis, including the BAFTA award winning MindGym
, Scott Kim
's Obsidian, A Sharp's King of Dragon Pass
, the Muppets Treasure Island, Voyager's Fun With Architecture and The Magic World of Beatrix Potter
.
Multimedia
Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...
titles. It was developed by mFactory and introduced in 1995. It introduced object-oriented concepts such as reusable objects, modifiers and behaviors into the multimedia authoring space dominated by Macromedia
Macromedia
Macromedia was an American graphics and web development software company headquartered in San Francisco, California that produced such products as Flash and Dreamweaver. Its rival, Adobe Systems, acquired Macromedia on December 3, 2005 and controls the line of Macromedia...
's Director software. mTropolis was bought in 1997 by Quark
Quark, Inc.
Quark, Inc. is a privately owned software company best known for QuarkXPress. It is called Quark because the company's goal is to "create software that would be the platform for publishing", just as quarks are the basis for all matter.As of August 2011, Quark's offerings include:* QuarkXPress -...
, which moved development from Burlingame, California
Burlingame, California
Burlingame is a city in San Mateo County, California. It is located on the San Francisco Peninsula and has a significant shoreline on San Francisco Bay. The city is named after diplomat Anson Burlingame. It is renowned for its many surviving examples of Victorian architecture, its affluence, and...
to Denver
Denver, Colorado
The City and County of Denver is the capital and the most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Denver is a consolidated city-county, located in the South Platte River Valley on the western edge of the High Plains just east of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains...
and then cancelled the product one year later. Despite efforts by its fervent users to attempt to save their investment and beloved tool, negotiations and even a possible purchase offer never came to fruition. http://archive.salon.com/21st/feature/1998/06/10feature.html
History
mTropolis competed in the interactiveInteractive media
Interactive media normally refers to products and services on digital computer-based systems which respond to the user’s actions by presenting content such as text, graphics, animation, video, audio, etc.-Terminology:...
multimedia product space dominated in the 1990s by Macromedia Director
Adobe Director
Adobe Director is a multimedia application authoring platform created by Macromedia—now part of Adobe Systems. It allows users to build applications built on a movie metaphor, with the user as the "director" of the movie...
. The software's maker, mFactory , founded in 1992, variously positioned mTropolis as an alternative and as an adjunct to Director.
mTropolis was short-lived, being bought by Quark
Quark, Inc.
Quark, Inc. is a privately owned software company best known for QuarkXPress. It is called Quark because the company's goal is to "create software that would be the platform for publishing", just as quarks are the basis for all matter.As of August 2011, Quark's offerings include:* QuarkXPress -...
in 1997, who then discontinued the product a few months later, possibly in favor of QuarkImmedia
QuarkImmedia
QuarkImmedia was an Internet and multimedia authoring and viewing application for Mac OS X and Windows, produced by Quark, Inc. Designed for use in conjunction with either QuarkXPress or QuarkXPress Passport it was primarily used for CD-ROM publishing....
. The use of behaviors in mTropolis spurred Macromedia
Macromedia
Macromedia was an American graphics and web development software company headquartered in San Francisco, California that produced such products as Flash and Dreamweaver. Its rival, Adobe Systems, acquired Macromedia on December 3, 2005 and controls the line of Macromedia...
on to introduce behaviors in Director 6.0.
I was there when Seery, Shepherd, meself and probably Greggy went over to the Mtrop user meetings. We straight out stole [behaviors] from
them.
- Alex Zavatone (ex Macromedia) on the Direct-L Mailing List, Tue, 9 Sep 2008
While multimedia CD-ROM authoring has largely been rendered irrelevant by online content distribution, mTropolis remains an interesting study in application design, and held a loyal following for many years.
Paradigm
The development environment was very different from the other tools around at the time - Apple ComputerApple Computer
Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...
's HyperCard
HyperCard
HyperCard is an application program created by Bill Atkinson for Apple Computer, Inc. that was among the first successful hypermedia systems before the World Wide Web. It combines database capabilities with a graphical, flexible, user-modifiable interface. HyperCard also features HyperTalk, written...
and others had a card based metaphor, and Macromedia Director had a film metaphor (the content area is called The Stage, the time line The Score, an assets library named The Cast, etc). In mTropolis there were sections, subsections, and scenes. Assets would be placed onto the scene, and then combinations of behaviors and modifiers would be dragged onto the assets
Powerful interaction and animation could be created by making different modifiers send messages to each other, allowing a user to create something impressive fairly quickly, without any typing. There was a simple programming language, accessed via a Miniscript modifier, but most of the programming was achieved by attaching standard behaviors and modifiers, and making selections within the modifier pop-up menus.
Technical Issues
According to Starship TitanicStarship Titanic
Starship Titanic is a computer adventure game designed by Douglas Adams and made by The Digital Village. It was released in 1998. It takes place on a starship of the same name which has undergone "Spontaneous Massive Existence Failure" and crash landed on Earth on its maiden voyage .The player...
author Douglas Adams
Douglas Adams
Douglas Noel Adams was an English writer and dramatist. He is best known as the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold over 15 million copies in his lifetime, a television...
, his team had originally selected mTropolis 1.0 for its development platform but it had to be abandoned for unspecified technical insufficiencies in favor of an in-house tool.http://www.starshiptitanic.com/game/mac.html
Miniscript Limitations
One criticism of the tool was that the integrated programming language, Miniscript, was lacking key features necessary for common tasks. Because mTropolis was conceived around a visual programmingVisual programming language
In computing, a visual programming language is any programming language that lets users create programs by manipulating program elements graphically rather than by specifying them textually. A VPL allows programming with visual expressions, spatial arrangements of text and graphic symbols, used...
metaphor, mFactory engineers intentionally omitted control constructs such as conditional loop
Conditional loop
In computer programming, conditional loops or repetitive control structures are a way for computer programs to repeat one or more various steps depending on conditions set either by the programmer initially or real-time by the actual program....
s. To remedy such limitations, the third-party developer AX Logic produced the commercially-available Alien Studio modifier as a drop-in replacement for Miniscript.
File Format
The advent in version 1.1 of the mTropolis browser plug-in for Netscape NavigatorNetscape Navigator
Netscape Navigator was a proprietary web browser that was popular in the 1990s. It was the flagship product of the Netscape Communications Corporation and the dominant web browser in terms of usage share, although by 2002 its usage had almost disappeared...
, dubbed mPire, exposed a core architectural shortcoming. The binary file format was not cross-platform; in order to make a mTropolis element available for embedding on a web page, the author was required to save a Macintosh version and a separate Windows version. Hence the web server had to store redundant copies of the same content, consuming disk space and necessitating the use of loader pages to serve the file appropriate for the end user's operating system.
Macintosh-Only Authoring
While playback engines existed for both the Macintosh and Windows platforms, the mTropolis authoring system itself only ran on the Mac.mTropolis 1.0
January 1995: Released at MacWorld San FranciscoMacworld Conference & Expo
Produced by Boston-based IDG World Expo, Macworld | iWorld is a trade-show with conference tracks dedicated to the Apple Macintosh platform. It is held annually in the United States, usually during the second week of January...
. Retail price $4,495.
mTropolis 1.1
May 1996: Added support for QuickTime VRQuickTime VR
QuickTime VR is a type of image file format developed by Apple Inc. for QuickTime. It allows the creation and viewing of photographically-captured panoramas and the exploration of objects through images taken at multiple viewing angles...
1.0. Retail price $1,195.
October 1996: mFactory releases beta 1 of the mPire browser plug-in.
mTropolis 2.0
March 1997: mFactory announces pre-order sales availability for version 2.0, due to ship in "the second half of May." Retail price $995.May 1997: Quark, Inc. purchases mFactory.
March 1998: Quark announces that v2.0 would be furnished free-of-charge to registered mTropolis v1 customers, but that the product will not be made available for general purchase.http://denver.bizjournals.com/denver/stories/1998/03/30/story5.html
Titles Created with mTropolis
A few CD-ROMCD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
s were created using mTropolis, including the BAFTA award winning MindGym
MindGym
MindGym is a surreal game about creative thinking. It was produced as a CD-ROM in 1996 by London-based Melrose Film Productions and NoHo Digital and published by Macmillan , Simon & Schuster and Ravensburger ....
, Scott Kim
Scott Kim
Scott Kim is an American puzzle and computer game designer, artist, and author. He started writing an occasional "Boggler" column for Discover magazine in 1990, and became an exclusive columnist in 1999, and created hundreds of other puzzles for magazines such as Scientific American and Games, as...
's Obsidian, A Sharp's King of Dragon Pass
King of Dragon Pass
King of Dragon Pass is a 1999 computer game published by A Sharp. Set in the fictional world of Glorantha, it depicts the lives and fortunes of one of several barbarian clans, settling the untamed lands of Dragon Pass over the course of several decades...
, the Muppets Treasure Island, Voyager's Fun With Architecture and The Magic World of Beatrix Potter
Beatrix Potter
Helen Beatrix Potter was an English author, illustrator, natural scientist and conservationist best known for her imaginative children’s books featuring animals such as those in The Tale of Peter Rabbit which celebrated the British landscape and country life.Born into a privileged Unitarian...
.