A
32-bit Windows program created in 1998 by
Roman Voska (aka 'Oscar', ex-Romanian now living in Canada with a wife and child). It was originally designed a personal application to create CD
frontends with, but it progressed beyond this and was released as beta releases (to people such as
Edd Twilbeck,
Ronnie Toon,
Pierre Labelle and
Artur Svarc). When it reached public release stage it was released as Shareware.
It's initial abilities were quite basic, offering just a quick way of designing and publishing CD-ROM
frontends in a
GUI enviroment.
Over time features such as an
MP3 player, Scripting engine, multimedia objects (i.e. sound/video, polygons, buttons etc.) animation, file embedding/packaging, plug-in functionality and more were added.
As it stands today (at v4.8 beta)
MMB (short for Multimedia Builder) allows anyone, be they designer, programmer, accountant or
shoe-shine boy in the street, to create and publish advanced
graphical Windows applications (and of course
multimedia publications).
The
scripting language is a
BASIC-based language, very easy to use and with a simplistic
syntax which eases the user in (while the designer/
IDE provides inbuilt
wizards to avoid scripting if the user wants, on a short term basis).
Scripted animation, Windows
MCI functionality,
MP3 playback (and internal list management), and system calls are all available.
The newer versions of
MMB allow for plugins to extend the functionality of the engine, and v4.8 includes the newer bind function which allows for the integration for any external graphical application into the projects own window, as well as interaction with the application.
The compilation process wraps the engine's
executable binary code around Oscar's proprietory
MBD project file format (which can either be left as-is or can be
compressed and password protected, but can still be ran through the engine), with the option of either using a full (
MP3 et al. functionality) player/engine, an
E-Card player/engine (smaller size but nearly all of the same functionality), or an external player (this is left open for possible different players/engines in the future). Then a secure encryption layer can also be added (which incidentally adds little to no extra runtime lag), and finally the designer can add their own Copyright information to the project (added to the executables File Description info alongside Oscar's copyright info for the
MMB player itself).
The last thing that happens before compilation is a
BASIC debug service which checks for wasted space and
hardcoded file paths.
The 4 greatest features of
MMB are as follows:
1)
MMB's player features a very nice
MP3 engine (which will be rewritten for v4.9/v5.0 to make it faster/smoother), as well as common
MP3-player functions such as
MP3Lists, also along with this other sound formats (
WAV/
MIDI) are supported. All of this allows any user to create their own
MP3/Sound player and package it in it's own interface. While apps made with
MMB don't differentiate in their sound quality (obviously using the same engine), it is still up to the designer to make their package better in usability.
2) It's
Scripting language. This
BASIC language is amazingly easy to learn, but also very versatile. It is still limited to the functions added to the engine, using Script objects (everything inside the
GUI designer is a visual object) and conditional statements, loops and other such tricks a lot can be gotten from this simplistic language (I should know, I initially did a lot of the board pushing of the language myself).
3) The
GUI designer for
MMB is amazingly easy to use, yet still versatile. A lot of
IDE's and
multimedia project designers go either one way or another. One extreme is to make it versatile and allow for advanced coding and designer but often ends in a hard to learn and use interface, and another extreme is too make it too easy, often eliminating a lot of functionality.
The
MMB design interface treads this line, it allows more advanced functions via different dialogs (mainly
scripting), but provides wizards and an easy to use object related user interface. The best of both worlds when it comes to actually designing and
distributing a working product.
4) The ultimate feature of
MMB is Oscar and the community that surrounds it.
Oscar is a great guy. He's a single programmer who up until last year produced
MMB completely by himself (until he took on the help of
Eric Tetz and
Lenny Gorczyca to rewrite and extend the program), and he's always willing to come to some arranged.
MMB is still sold as
shareware online at a cheap price and anyone who has ever registered
MMB at any time recieves every new version of
MMB free, for as long as new versions have been released.
The online
MMB community is amazing. It began on a single "
Matts BBS Script" style message board (single index, no user accounts or advanced features) and it's grown ever stronger since. Back then we were just a bunch of people (I supposed after the first
MMB users you could call me a 2nd generation
MMB user, with us now being into a 4th generation) who really enjoyed making new stuff in
MMB. There was a time when people like me were producing demos for brilliant new stuff every day (just like the old demo's of
BBS days, this is how great it was).
Today the
MMB community is situated at the
MMB Support Forums were there is now over 2000 registered users, and at the very least 500 active users. The same community spirit is in place, even after many rough times, and everyone is looking forward to the future.
For more info on
MMB, see: http://www.mediachance.com/