MUPPETS STORMED THE SCENE at Sesame Street back in the late '60s, and we knew that children's television -- and early childhood education -- had changed. Activision, in cooperation with Jim Henson Productions, has set its sights on expanding a new children's medium: CD-ROM. The Muppet Treasure Island game is the visually stunning result not only of many different artistic talents but also of a new multimedia-development tool, mTropolis.
Activision turned to mFactory's mTropolis and its unique object-oriented programming system to create Bembo, Bristol, the ship Hispaniola, and the Island, the four worlds in Muppet Treasure Island. mTropolis lets developers create a single template for a character's habits and behavior. This template can then be shared throughout the development process -- a feature that allowed separate programmers to create the four different worlds independently and that minimized costly and time-consuming programming repetition. This ability to share behaviors is, according to Activision's Mark Loparco, "an idea whose time has come."
mTropolis is just the underpinnings of the Muppet Treasure Island game. The real success of the title is in the graphically rich backdrops and the ability to interact with the Muppets. The Muppets were filmed against a blue screen. Activision then employed Flint, a high-end compositing application running on an SGI workstation, to seamlessly merge the characters with the background. Finally, the team at Activision used a five-step process to reduce the palette to 256 colors and integrate the video of the Muppets into the mTropolis environment.
1. THE CHARACTERS. The player assumes the role of Hawkins, a non-gender-specific character. With the help of Stevenson the Parrot, a new Muppet character, Hawkins gathers clues that open the doors to the four worlds. Along the way, Hawkins and Stevenson meet many other Muppets, including Kermit, Miss Piggy, Fozzie, Beaker, Gonzo, and Rizzo. Gonzo and Rizzo appear throughout the adventure to assist Hawkins. The scenes demonstrate how seamlessly the Muppets were composited into the 256-color backdrop.
2. HELP. Stevenson the Parrot, a help figure designed to guide players, carries a wealth of gadgets under his wing to assist Hawkins in navigating from world to world. As Stevenson moves through the four worlds, his actions remain the same, thanks to the template created by Activision in mTropolis. In most scenes, Stevenson appears as a small figure in the background, ready to assist Hawkins. When a player clicks on him, he appears in the foreground at a larger size and offers assistance.
3. NAVIGATION. The way in which a player moves through the worlds is similar to that of other CD-ROM games. As you pass the cursor over the edge of the screen, it changes to indicate directions in which you can move. There are also hot spots, such as doorways and gangplanks, that take you into other scenes. Some places are more difficult to get to than others. For instance, you cannot enter Squire Trelawney's Mansion, shown here, unless you first succeed in other areas of the game.
WHAT:
Muppet Treasure Island
COMPANY:
Activision (in cooperation with Jim Henson Productions), 800-477-3650 or 310-479-5644.
TOOLS:
mFactory mTropolis, for the run-time environment and for interactive development; Electric Image's ElectricImage Animation System, for 3-D rendering; Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After Effects, and Equilibrium's DeBabilizer, for additional image processing. Painted backdrops rendered on a Quantel Paintbox system. Video of the Muppet characters composited on an SGI-based Flint system.
