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 programming metaphor, mFactory engineers intentionally omitted control constructs such as conditional loops. 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 Navigator, 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. Release history mTropolis 1.0 January 1995: Released at MacWorld San Francisco. Retail price $4,495. mTropolis 1.1 May 1996: Added support for QuickTime VR 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. Titles Created with mTropolis Due to the way the mTropolis Player was separate from developer content, by viewing the files, it is easy to tell if a title was developed with mTropolis. A few CD-ROMs were created using mTropolis, including the BAFTA award winning MindGym, Scott Kim's Obsidian, A Sharp's King of Dragon Pass, Muppet Treasure Island, Voyager's Fun With Architecture, The Magic World of Beatrix Potter, SPQR: The Empire's Darkest Hour and The Day the World Broke References External links mtropolis.com (archived 2000) Multimedia software Authoring systems Orphan works