Portable mediascapes
Portable mediascapes can be played anywhere. The usual way of doing this is to get the user to place the regions needed in the game. The mscapers webiste has a tutorial that will take you through a step by step account of how the game "Stamp the Mole" was created. It is a first hand account so that you can get an idea of the thought process used and the steps that are taken.
How to make a portable game (opens in a new window)
Slideshows
Mscape maker also has a Slideshow feature. This is a nice way of having several images or sounds display in sequence when a region is enterred (which was not possible in the last schools version of the software). To strat creating a slideshow for your mediascape, just right-click on the Slideshows item under Media and choose Add Slideshow
This will create an item called Slideshow01 under Slideshows. Now right-click on this and select Configure Slideshow.
You will be shown a small window into which you can drag a background audio track, and the images and video that you want to be shown in the slideshow. You can also specify when you want the images to be shown (for instance, one after 1 second, one after 6 seconds, etc.
Video
Mscape maker now supports video files (in Adobe Flash format). You can simply import these to your mediascape as you would do with audio or images, via the toolbar at the top of the mscape maker screen. These videos must be in Flash format (.swf files). If you need to convert your video files to this format, try using this free (for 30 days) tool: http://www.sothink.com/product/flashvideoencoder/index.htm
HTML (Web Pages)
Mscape maker now also supports HTML files (web pages). This means you can create a web page with text, images and links and use this in your mediascape. A simple way of creating a web page is to write it in Microsoft Word or PowerPoint, and save the document as a webpage. To import a Web Page to your mediascape, simply right-click on the WebPages item under Media and choose Import Html Files
Flash
Flash is a tool and file format for creating interactive, media-rich applications for the internet. It is a pretty-good, all-round multimedia program. You can use it in a simple drag-and-drop manner, or you can get more involved and write scripts (programming code) to create more complex things. With the Flash tool you create a file called a 'Flash movie'. This can be imported into your mediascape. Flash is a richer environment than HTML. HTML is fine for displaying text and numbers but with Flash you could include small, stand-alone animations and multimedia pieces that would not be possible with HTML. It is possible to communicate information between a Flash file and a mediascape. This is similar to what is possible with HTML, but whereas HTML is limited to text and numbers, Flash offers more interesting possibilities in terms of graphics and interactivity. You could create games and puzzles that the user interacted with as part of the mediascape.
For more information on using Flash in your mediascapes, visit the Mscapers website where it talks about this in more detail.
Other tools
There are a few other advanced features in the new software. These include a Timer so events can happen after a set time; Buttons which allows you to make things happen depending on what buttons the user presses on their PDA; and Map Displayer which makes the map of an area automatically display when a user enters a particular region.
