mTropolis

mtropolis
Engine developer
Companies that used it	Various
Games that use it	Dozens
Date added to ScummVM	2022-08-05
First release containing it	None

mTropolis, (pronounced like the English word "metropolis"), was a multimedia creation tool by mFactory. It had a userbase of a few thousand during the mid-to-late 90s but was outcompeted by Macromedia's Director. A few games were built on mTropolis with high profile titles including Obsidian and Muppet Treasure Island. Though mTropolis lent itself to the development of HyperCard-like point-and-click games, the tech was a fully-featured multimedia project creation suite that was used for various niche projects.

Games targeted by the engine

See mTropolis/Games.

History

mTropolis was released to the public at 1995's Macworld Expo in San Francisco. The mTropolis "authoring system" was designed for Mac System 7 and supported both 68K and PowerPC CPUs. Despite the Mac-centric development ecosystem, runtimes or "playback systems" were available for Mac and Windows. A web target and accompanying Netscape plugin was also developed.

mFactory's assets were purchased by Quark in 1997 who released mTropolis v2.0 in 1998. This was a final update and the end of all support for the product. A usergroup attempted to purchase the mTropolis IP and possibly make it open-source but negotiations fell through.

Versions

mTropolis v1.0: January 1995
mTropolis v1.1: May 1996
mTropolis v1.1.1: October 10 1996
mTropolis v1.1.2: December 16 1996
mTropolis v1.1.3: September 5 1997
mTropolis v2.0: March 1998

Resources

External Links

Articles

Game Developer Magazine: "Goodbye, mTropolis" by Kevin S. Willis of Ransom Interactive (1998-06)
King of Dragon Pass (Blog): An Architecture Overview (2011-02-06)
Salon: The Software that Refused to Die (1998-10-06)

Emulating a 68K or PPC Mac to Run the mTropolis Authoring Software

The authoring software isn't needed to run any games though it may be useful for research about the engine.