Re: mTropolis refugees

[Richard Gaskin]

Wolfgang Bereuter wrote:


On 18.11.2005, at 03:57, Richard Gaskin wrote:

I've long had an offer that if someone wants to pay my bills for a  
few months


Richard, you said allways *one* month, if I remember your offer(s)  well;)


True, but I'm pickier about fine-tuning and testing these days, and 
accordingly have become better at estimating. :)


--
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Re: mTropolis Refugees

[Wolfgang Bereuter]

On 17.11.2005, at 09:27, John Tregea wrote:

What a fantastic product it was, and I still say "Damn Adobe and  
Quark" for

killing it between them...


agree 100% ;)

regards
Wolfgang M. Bereuter

T-mapping© is PhotoLearning Mindmaps!
...
http://www.internettrainer.com
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
...
Edelhofg. 17/11, A-1180 Wien, Austria
Tel: ++43/1/ 479 6410
Fax: ++43/1/ 955 14 64-198


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Re: mTropolis refugees

[Wolfgang Bereuter]

On 18.11.2005, at 03:57, Richard Gaskin wrote:

I've long had an offer that if someone wants to pay my bills for a  
few months
Richard, you said allways *one* month, if I remember your offer(s)  
well;)


I'd be happy to crank one out.  But getting a few extra months free  
here will be difficult for quite a while --  I wonder if some of  
the other readers here might be sufficiently intrigued to hack one  
out, perhaps as an open source project?


Never enough IDEs for this capable engine, IMO. Always one more  
workflow preference to cater to.   It sure would be fun to add  
RevTropolis to the mix. :)
Would be realy nice, but i m waiting for that (revTropolis would be  
much better than ReviShell) so lang, that I cant belive, that it will  
be realized any more. So, unfortunatly omegaconcept´s Quickmedia/ 
Mistralmove is the only alternative for non scripters at the moment.


regards
Wolfgang M. Bereuter

T-mapping© is PhotoLearning Mindmaps!
...
http://www.internettrainer.com
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
...
Edelhofg. 17/11, A-1180 Wien, Austria
Tel: ++43/1/ 479 6410
Fax: ++43/1/ 955 14 64-198


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RE: mTropolis Refugees

[David Glasgow]

On 18 Nov 2005, at 6:03 am, Jesse Sng wrote:


we were looking at using the
brand new (then) mTropolis 2.0. Anyway we got burnt by that and it
took me many years before I got rid of the mTropolis box that was
sitting on my shelf.


Mine's still there! Funky chimney top hat and all.  Still got the 
goldfish tutorial, too.  And the bile still rises when I think about 
how I paid for it just before it was killed.


I had no idea anyone out there still uses it.  Has its cross platform 
performance been limited by newer versions of Windows?


I was also intrigued by the account of the mTropolis metaphor.  My 
recollection is that it was sold as being free of metaphors and this 
was a *Good Thing*.  As it happens, I am not convinced by that 
argument.  I could go on about why, but it would probably be too 
boring.


I switched to Hyperscript (before Transcript), and struggled for a 
short while before there was a 'ker-ching' moment.  I think this is 
when the metaphor becomes clear in your mind.  It doesn't mean you can 
make fast efficient code, or realise the full potential of the tool, 
but you can make an outline plan of possible alternative routes to 
achieve your goal.  Also, extensions to the metaphor have a place to be 
put.  So, for example when you realise the difference between groups 
and backgrounds, you get a happy feeling.


Oh dear, I did go on about metaphors.  Sorry, didn't mean to.

I have positive memories of mTroplolis, and look forward to 
contributions from top hatters, converts or no.



Best Wishes,

David Glasgow

http://www.i-psych.co.uk


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RE: mTropolis Refugees

[John Tregea]

Hi Jesse,

I am heading back to Singapore in a few weeks (I lived there for ten years).
We are evaluating Revolution (and mySQL) at the moment to see if we should
transition our maritime security products to this pair instead of WebObjects
and OpenBase. 

Are you still involved in the programming side? I would be glad to hear your
experiences if you wouldn't mind meeting up and having a coffee sometime.

Regards

John T.

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jesse Sng
Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2005 9:30 PM
To: How to use Revolution
Subject: RE: mTropolis Refugees

>I used mTropolis 2.0 for an interactive CD/ROM that was used to promote
>Singapore. We had QTVR's of Raffles hotel and other famous landmarks,
>quicktime video, stills, maps and most innovatively at that time live links
>to the updatable information on the web for hotel bookings and theme park
>availability etc. Oh, those were the days.
>
>What a fantastic product it was, and I still say "Damn Adobe and Quark" for
>killing it between them...
>
>Cheers
>
>John T

Hi John,

Interesting. I'm also in Singapore and we were looking at using the 
brand new (then) mTropolis 2.0. Anyway we got burnt by that and it 
took me many years before I got rid of the mTropolis box that was 
sitting on my shelf.


Jesse Sng
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Re: mTropolis refugees

[Richard Gaskin]

Janus Jakaterina wrote:

Could a drag-and-drop interface be made; has anybody
tried? Doesn't Revolution have a roll-your-own 
feeling with emphasis on scripting rather than
connecting components? 


Yes, compared to a drag-and-drop system Rev is much more akin to 
traditional procedural programming.


But it's fast enough and flexible enough to build such a UI, if only 
there were sufficient interest to warrant the effort (there's a Catch 22 
here: mTropolis having died suggests the market lies elsewhere, yet had 
mTropolis lived there would already be one and no need to build another 
).


I've long had an offer that if someone wants to pay my bills for a few 
months I'd be happy to crank one out.  But getting a few extra months 
free here will be difficult for quite a while --  I wonder if some of 
the other readers here might be sufficiently intrigued to hack one out, 
perhaps as an open source project?


Never enough IDEs for this capable engine, IMO. Always one more workflow 
preference to cater to.   It sure would be fun to add RevTropolis to the 
mix. :)



With Revolution, well, I don't really know where to
begin. 


You might consider beginning here:


Those downloadable stack files were put together in a joint effort 
between RunRev, Jacque Gay, and some of the most experienced scripters 
in this community.  They cover a broad range of topics -- pick one that 
sounds interesting, read the material, then another, and soon you'll 
have a good foundation.


And of course, there's no substitute for hands-on playtime. Make a 
stack, put some objects in it, add some scripts and see what happens


--
 Richard Gaskin
 Managing Editor, revJournal
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Re: mTropolis refugees

[Janus Jakaterina]

First, thank you to the several people who responded.
I was led to this list by a comment from Heather Nagey
(Customer Support Manager. Runtime Revolution Ltd.) on
the mtropolis survivors list. Quark killed mTropolis
in 1998, but a survivors list still exists, even if
not very active, some seven years later. So what makes
a product worth following so long after its demise?  

mTropolis used a section, subsection, scene metaphor
(I understand Revolution uses a card metaphor and
Director uses a film metaphor). Every piece of media
is an asset. Drag modifier icons onto assets to give
them functionality, such as sending messages. Set the
parameters of a modifier with a window of pull-down
lists or fields. This concept of programming by
drag-and-drop icons is prevalent in Quickmedia
(http://www.omegaconcept.fr/index.php?oc=52), but what
set mTropolis apart was behaviors, basically
containers of modifiers that permitted complex actions
to be built up. A whole behavior could be switched on
or off or copied to other media (aliasing). Glen
Hunter does a good job of capturing the mTropolis
experience (see
http://www.cbd-hq.com/articles/2000/000501gh_mtropolis.asp):
a component-based development tool. The intuitive
interface and OOP power made development fast and --
get this -- fun.   

The mTropolis reference guide also set a standard. You
can d/l a copy (4.8 MB) at
http://www.arch.columbia.edu/DDL/cad/AOI/S99/basics/Reference.pdf
and the quick reference quide (260 kB) is at
http://www.arch.columbia.edu/DDL/cad/AOI/S99/basics/Quick_ref.pdf
.

That brings me to the present. Steve Goldberg, many
thanks for your thoughts. I just can't see behaviors
and aliasing in Revolution, however. Is it just an
interface thing or are they wrapped up in a whole
different architecture? Could a drag-and-drop
interface be made; has anybody tried? Doesn't
Revolution have a roll-your-own feeling with emphasis
on scripting rather than connecting components? 

With mTropolis I just dragged out my media and
modifiers and started snapping everything together.
With Revolution, well, I don't really know where to
begin. 

I seem to be suffering vertigo of the informational architecture.



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Re: mTropolis Refugees

[Jim Hurley]

Message: 10
Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 16:01:25 -0800 (PST)
From: Janus Jakaterina <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: mTropolis Refugees
To: use-revolution@lists.runrev.com
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

Are there many mTropolis folk now residing in the land
of Revolution?

If so, how is Revolution for behaviors, aliasing, and
messaging?

Other than the arcade engine, which seems to be a 3rd
party product, can Revolution handle multiple moving
objects or collision detection?



Janus,

Not sure what mTropolis is, but you might check out  "Nine ball" on 
my web site:


http://home.infostations.net/jhurley/

Actually Run Rev can handle 15 ball pool, but it clutters the table. 
You might also find "Bouncing ball tools" helpful as well. Depends on 
what you are interested in.


Jim


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Re: mTropolis refugees

[Stgoldberg]

Regarding mTropolis versus Revolution, I've used mTropolis for many projects. 
Presently all the programs in our medical publishing company have been done 
in mTropolis (www.medmaster.net).   Since the demise of mTropolis, I've looked 
at other programs but have now gone to Revolution, which works on OS X, has 
easy Internet connectivity, and has a far more advanced scripting language.   
The concept of behaviors and aliasing is also a feature of Revolution, but it 
is 
done differently, referring to premade scripts that may reside, for instance, 
in the stack or card.   To me, the ideal program would be one with mTropolis' 
interface, but with the power of Revolution's scripting.

One of the main problems with Revolution, which I understand is being 
addressed now, is the still inadequate documentation for basic features of the 
program.   mTropolis had a superb user manual. While Revolution has an 
excellent 
online dictionary that explains the meaning and usage of the various scripting 
terms, it still does not have an organized documentation of a number of basic 
features of the program, such as the property inspector, which is heavily used 
in the programming process.   

I suspect that I might not be using Revolution at all if I did not already 
have a significant background in Hypercard scripting, since it is so important 
to have the proper documentation to get started. There is a need for the 
beginner to have a good Getting Started manual, for both the scripting process 
and 
understanding the basic features of the program.The Revolution forum is a 
fantastic source of information. There are many people who are right there 
immediately trying to be of help, and have helped me considerably a number of 
times.   I suspect, though, that there would be less need for questions 
addressed 
to the forum if the documentation for Revolution were better.   The problem is 
that in order to find something, the information appears scattered with no 
central source for addressing many "How to do it" situations.  While there is a 
user manual, it has no Index and the information is not well organized.   As 
mentioned, I understand this is being addressed, and will be important for the 
program to attract new users, particularly if they have no prior experience 
with Hypercard, Metacard or related languages.   All-in-all, Revolution is a 
very powerful program, easy to use in comparison with programs like C++ or 
Java, 
and is the best I've been able to find since mTropolis, which is why I've made 
the switch.
Steve Goldberg

In a message dated 11/16/05 7:52:28 PM, 
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:


> From: Janus Jakaterina <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: mTropolis Refugees
> To: use-revolution@lists.runrev.com
> Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
> 
> Are there many mTropolis folk now residing in the land
> of Revolution?
> 
> If so, how is Revolution for behaviors, aliasing, and
> messaging?
> 
> 

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RE: mTropolis Refugees

[Jesse Sng]

I used mTropolis 2.0 for an interactive CD/ROM that was used to promote
Singapore. We had QTVR's of Raffles hotel and other famous landmarks,
quicktime video, stills, maps and most innovatively at that time live links
to the updatable information on the web for hotel bookings and theme park
availability etc. Oh, those were the days.

What a fantastic product it was, and I still say "Damn Adobe and Quark" for
killing it between them...

Cheers

John T


Hi John,

Interesting. I'm also in Singapore and we were looking at using the 
brand new (then) mTropolis 2.0. Anyway we got burnt by that and it 
took me many years before I got rid of the mTropolis box that was 
sitting on my shelf.



Jesse Sng
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RE: mTropolis Refugees

[John Tregea]

I used mTropolis 2.0 for an interactive CD/ROM that was used to promote
Singapore. We had QTVR's of Raffles hotel and other famous landmarks,
quicktime video, stills, maps and most innovatively at that time live links
to the updatable information on the web for hotel bookings and theme park
availability etc. Oh, those were the days.

What a fantastic product it was, and I still say "Damn Adobe and Quark" for
killing it between them...

Cheers 

John T

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Scott Rossi
Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2005 11:37 AM
To: How to use Revolution
Subject: Re: mTropolis Refugees

Recently,Janus Jakaterina wrote:

> Are there many mTropolis folk now residing in the land of Revolution?

Not a refugee, more like a second cousin's nephew, twice removed, who
visited once in a while...

 
> If so, how is Revolution for behaviors, aliasing, and messaging?

Again, I'm no mTropolis expert (mTropolis was a long time ago by the way),
but you can give objects their own behaviors that allow them to live, act
and die on their own using something like "send xyz to me..."  Messages can
also be passed from objects to the "environment" of the card and stack,
either using the previous "send..." command or automatically via Rev's
message hierarchy (see here for a good explanation of Rev's message path:
<http://www.fourthworld.com/embassy/articles/revolution_message_path.html>).

The issue you have to watch out for is having dozens of things happening on
screen at once; Rev is not really optimized for this kind of thing across
the board (low end graphics cards and/or processors can affect performance),
but with careful design (and lots of testing) you can get away with some
decent animation/movement.

 
> Other than the arcade engine, which seems to be a 3rd party product, 
> can Revolution handle multiple moving objects or collision detection?

Yes to both.  You can search the list archives for more info on this, and
the following was posted just the other day:

Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 20:01:57 -0800
Subject: Re: maze wall algorithm
From: Scott Rossi
To: How to use Revolution

Recently,N Cueto wrote:

> If given a maze in the form of a
> grid
> ...
> then, what would be the
> ideal scripting for limiting
> "movement" between only
> contiguous squares that are
> not separated by a wall

The way I've done something like this in the past is to use physical
boundaries, in other words, using the intersect and/or within functions to
prevent/constrain movement in certain directions.  From your example, it's
not clear if you *need* to limit movement based on numerical progression,
but this could be handled easily via the loc property, as you guessed.

You could use rectangle "wall" graphics combined with the above functions to
allow for moveable obstacles, and test for collision with the graphics on
the current maze/screen.  Alternatively, if you were able to use a single
image as your maze, this would allow for testing intersect/within results
within a single object -- the image.  This is the benefit of using images
for collision detection in that you can test for non-transparent pixel
collisions, as opposed to using graphics which only allow for rects.  I
don't know if images would work in your situation but that was the technique
I used and it's reliable.

Let me know if this makes sense (or if not, maybe I can dig up an old demo).

Of course, one must also keep in mind Malte Brill's Arcade Engine...

[end post]


Regards,

Scott Rossi
Creative Director
Tactile Media, Multimedia & Design
-
E: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
W: http://www.tactilemedia.com

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Re: mTropolis Refugees

[Malte Brill]

Hi Janus,


Other than the arcade engine, which seems to be a 3rd
party product, can Revolution handle multiple moving
objects or collision detection?


ArcadeEngine is completely written in Transcript, so if you roll your 
own scripts the answer is yes, it is possible. The built in move 
command and collision tests are a bit limited though, so it takes  bit 
of experience with Transcript and it´s characteristics, a certain 
familiarity with collision detection algorithms and a bit (actually 
quite a bit) math to roll your own handlers and functions for 
movement/collision detection with satisfactory results. I recommend you 
look at all of Scott Rossis stacks for some inspiration on how to 
create nice animations, at Jim Hurleys 9ball stack for inspiration on 
collision detection and if 3rd party products are an option, download 
the ArcadeEngine trial and play with it for a while.


All the best,

Malte


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Re: mTropolis Refugees

[Scott Rossi]

Recently,Janus Jakaterina wrote:

> Are there many mTropolis folk now residing in the land
> of Revolution?

Not a refugee, more like a second cousin's nephew, twice removed, who
visited once in a while...

 
> If so, how is Revolution for behaviors, aliasing, and
> messaging? 

Again, I'm no mTropolis expert (mTropolis was a long time ago by the way),
but you can give objects their own behaviors that allow them to live, act
and die on their own using something like "send xyz to me..."  Messages can
also be passed from objects to the "environment" of the card and stack,
either using the previous "send..." command or automatically via Rev's
message hierarchy (see here for a good explanation of Rev's message path:
).

The issue you have to watch out for is having dozens of things happening on
screen at once; Rev is not really optimized for this kind of thing across
the board (low end graphics cards and/or processors can affect performance),
but with careful design (and lots of testing) you can get away with some
decent animation/movement.

 
> Other than the arcade engine, which seems to be a 3rd
> party product, can Revolution handle multiple moving
> objects or collision detection?

Yes to both.  You can search the list archives for more info on this, and
the following was posted just the other day:

Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 20:01:57 -0800
Subject: Re: maze wall algorithm
From: Scott Rossi
To: How to use Revolution

Recently,N Cueto wrote:

> If given a maze in the form of a
> grid
> ...
> then, what would be the
> ideal scripting for limiting
> "movement" between only
> contiguous squares that are
> not separated by a wall

The way I've done something like this in the past is to use physical
boundaries, in other words, using the intersect and/or within functions to
prevent/constrain movement in certain directions.  From your example, it's
not clear if you *need* to limit movement based on numerical progression,
but this could be handled easily via the loc property, as you guessed.

You could use rectangle "wall" graphics combined with the above functions to
allow for moveable obstacles, and test for collision with the graphics on
the current maze/screen.  Alternatively, if you were able to use a single
image as your maze, this would allow for testing intersect/within results
within a single object -- the image.  This is the benefit of using images
for collision detection in that you can test for non-transparent pixel
collisions, as opposed to using graphics which only allow for rects.  I
don't know if images would work in your situation but that was the technique
I used and it's reliable.

Let me know if this makes sense (or if not, maybe I can dig up an old demo).

Of course, one must also keep in mind Malte Brill's Arcade Engine...

[end post]


Regards,

Scott Rossi
Creative Director
Tactile Media, Multimedia & Design
-
E: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
W: http://www.tactilemedia.com

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mTropolis Refugees

[Janus Jakaterina]

Are there many mTropolis folk now residing in the land
of Revolution?

If so, how is Revolution for behaviors, aliasing, and
messaging? 

Other than the arcade engine, which seems to be a 3rd
party product, can Revolution handle multiple moving
objects or collision detection?







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