mTropolis

mTropolis (pronounced "metropolis") was a multimedia authoring tool created in 1996 by mFactory (pronounced "em-factory"). The development environment was very different from the other tools around at the time - Apple Computer'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.

The main problem with this sort of program is that the Internet has offered so many options that delivering content on CDs and even DVDs isn't commercially feasible anymore. Still, mTropolis remains an interesting study in application design, and held a loyal following for many years.

mTropolis was short lived, being bought by Quark in 1997, who then discontinued the product a few months later, possibly in favor of QuarkImmedia. Many believe though that the use of behaviors in mTropolis spurred Macromedia on to introduce behaviors in Director 6.0.

Limitations

Miniscript Deficiencies

One criticism of the tool was that the included textual programming language, Miniscript, was lacking key features necessary for many tasks. Because mTropolis was conceived around a visual programming language metaphor, mFactory engineers intentionally omitted control constructs such as conditional loops. Miniscript lists could not store other lists. 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 Issues

The web browser plug-in for mTropolis content, known as mPire, was available for both Macintosh and Windows. Unfortunately, the 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. And the web server had to store both copies of the same content, wasting disk space and necessitating the use of loader pages to serve the file matching the browser operating system.

Release History

mTropolis Developer Release

April 1995

mTropolis 1.0

January 1995: Released at MacWorld San Francisco. Retail price $4,495.

mTropolis 1.1

Retail price $1,195.

mTropolis 2.0

March 1997: mFactory announces the upcoming availability of v2.0 in "the second half of May," retail price $995.

March 1998: Quark announces that v2.0 would be furnished free-of-charge to existing mTropolis customers, but that the product will not be available for purchase.

Titles Created with mTropolis

A few CD-ROMs were created using mTropolis, including 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.

According to Starship Titanic 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.[1]

External links

• Adams, Douglas. "Why isn't Starship Titanic on the Macintosh?". Retrieved 2008-05-31.
• Lindsay, Greg. "The software that refused to die". Retrieved 2008-05-31.