mTropolis
Index: Requirements
Problems Companies
Platforms Languages
Software Research
- MFactory home page: http://www.mfactory.com
- MOM -- mTropolis Object Model
- Plug-in architecture
- Based on COM
- "Mr. Mom" is Joe Marini, who's designed MOM
- Katja Rimmi, Interface Designer
- 1440 Chapin Avenue, Suite #200, Burlingame, CA 94010
- Phone: (415) 548-0600
- Fax: (415) 548-9249
- Email: katja@mfactory.com
- Met at the BayCHI Games for Kids meeting, introduced to me by Will
Wright
- mTropolis Intro: http://www.mfactory.com/mtropolis/product_info/PI01_INFO.HTML
- mTropolis is an authoring environment for the creation and distribution
of interactive multimedia applications and titles. It provides four major
benefits to multimedia producers and programmers: portability, performance,
productivity, and extensibility. While some of these benefits are available
from other tools, mTropolis provides all of them simultaneously and to a
degree greater than other tools. This document describes some of the philosophy
behind mTropolis and explains how it delivers these benefits.
- mTropolis is based on the mFactory Object Model (MOM). MOM is an application
programming interface (API) that enables programmers to extend mTropolis'
built-in capabilities. MOM's object-oriented nature permits new capabilities
to be seamlessly integrated in both the authoring environment and the player.
Extending mTropolis is usually as simple as dropping a few objects into
a folder on a Macintosh or Windows system. Extending the capability of a
title is not much more demanding. The time and cost savings is significant
and the range of customization is high.
- In contrast to other tools, mTropolis, via MOM, has a clean and unencumbered
architecture for "plug-in" objects. Developers can rapidly create
new objects in C or C++, with a minimum of attention to the nagging housekeeping
and low-level details that other tools' plug-in architectures require. The
high level of productivity that mTropolis provides ensures that there will
be a large supply of useful third party objects.
- mTropolis' plug-in architecture employs a patent-pending algorithm
that ensures that plug-in objects perform at the same level as objects that
are built into the program's core. With no performance penalty for plug-in
objects, unlike other tools, mTropolis will enable developers and end users
to benefit from a wide variety of plug-ins.
- mTropolis Information Brochure: http://www.mfactory.com/mtropolis/product_info/PI02_OVERVIEW.HTML
- Exceptional performance on common consumer platforms. Native "C"-level
performance on 68020 Macintosh and 486SX/25 Windows PCs.
- Transparent multi-platform portability. Deploy an optimized Windows
title from a Macintosh project in a few rapid steps.
- Open framework for complete extensibility so you can take charge of
your development destiny. Add a new collision object, or replace the rendering
service with a custom 3D engine - transparently.
- Object-oriented to help you model complex worlds and re-use your work.
Re-use a crow object from a children's title in a murder mystery project
and it knows how to behave.
- Enabling interface designed by production veterans to accelerate your
development process. Multiple views of your work in progress and a consistent
drag-and-drop interface to change the behavior of thousands of components
without manually altering a single one.
- Collaborative development. By eliminating creative, productivity,
and collaborative barriers for programmers and artists, mTropolis significantly
reduces the time and cost required to develop high-end commercial multimedia
titles.
- Streaming and messaging capabilities for future networked applications.
In upcoming releases, stream your titles to web clients, and easily send
messages across networks to enable multi-user experiences.