Stagecast Creator lets you build your own "sims" -- simulations, interactive stories, games, and more. Create colorful characters. Make the rules that determine how they will behave and interact. With Creator, you are limited only by your computer's capacity and your imagination!

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Below are the main improvements of Stagecast Creator 2 over version 1:

1. Extensions

The most important improvement is that Creator 2 is extensible. Drop a Stagecast plugin into the new "Plugins" folder and you have added a new feature to Creator!

The new Calculator plugin is included free with every edition of Creator 2.

The new Grapher plugin is included in most education editions of Creator 2. With this new special character, a secondary school student or adult can plot numeric data in line and bar charts.

The new Extension for Microsoft Class Server will be available for purchase from RM in the UK, from CCV in the USA, and from Stagecast in other countries. It provides a menu command to generate a file that is easily imported into Microsoft's new learning management system, Microsoft Class Server.

Other plugins will be available for purchase from Stagecast.

2. Calculator

Creator 2 provides a calculator for performing extensive calculations. Instead of being limited to simple one-operation actions such as

A calculation may contain any number of operations. The calculator has a tape that displays them. This will let you compute, for example, sophisticated motions for characters such as planets orbiting. One of the nicest features is a "random" number item that, every time it is executed in a calculation, computes a random number in a specified range.

But the best part is that the calculator is extensible. In addition to the basic four numeric functions, we have included extensions with trigonometric, logarithmic and text functions such as append and remove. The latter allows the calculator to be used for text manipulation.

3. A sophisticated new look!

4. One-click Publishing of Web pages

The Make Web Page command of Creator 2 is now called Publish. Publish offers you the option of uploading a simulation and its associated HTML file to a specified web server directly from Creator. You no longer have to save the files locally and then transfer them manually with a program like FTP. There is a new folder called Internet Sites in which you can place files describing your favorite sites that accept uploads.

5. Snapshots of simulations

You can make a JPEG image of any simulation in Creator 2. It can be either a full-size image or a tiny "thumbnail" image. You can capture key scenes in your simulation and include them in documents or put them on the Web. This lets people see what your simulation looks like without having to run it. (All game catalogues do this.)

6. Text features

You can type into text characters in Creator 2 while a simulation is running. This lets you set up "control panels" of text characters to control running simulations.

Other new features of text characters include the ability to align the text left, center or right; to make the border visible or invisible; to set the size of the text box from a rule; to automatically resize the text to fit in the text box; to control the exact pixel location of the text to make it easier to use text characters for labels.

7. Stage improvements

Stage background pictures in Creator 2 can be centered in the stage's area, tiled to cover the area, or scaled to fit the area.

The "switch stage" action can now take a variable that contains the stage to switch to; this makes it easier to compute the stage to display next.

8. Appearance features

Characters' Appearances in Creator 2 can be four times as large as before: 8x8 squares big vs. 4x4 squares.

When a variable is displayed in an appearance, its value can now be aligned left, center or right in the appearance, just as with text characters.

In addition to allowing display of values of character variables, Creator 2 now allows you to display values of global variables in the appearance of a character.

Creator 2 supports transparency in appearances. You can import images that contain transparency, and Creator's Picture Painter now includes a "transparent" color.

9. More Rule Tests

The key test in Creator 2 has an option that allows it to check for any key being pressed, not just a specific key. This is useful to implement "press any key to continue."

There is a new test, does not contain, for checking the text or numbers in a variable.

10. More Rule Actions

There is a new action in the Rule Maker that will switch to a specified Web page when the simulation runs in a browser.

Reset, Quit, and Stop commands can now be included in rules.

11. Centering the Follow-Me Character

You can make Creator 2 keep the follow-me character centered in the stage as the stage scrolls, rather than having the character get all the way to the edge before the stage scrolls. Many games keep the main character centered.

12. Easier Installation of Web Player

Stagecast Web Player has a new installer that makes it quicker and easier to obtain the Web Player if you don't have it on your computer. When you visit a Web page that contains a non-InstantSim simulation--one that requires Web Player--and you don't have Web Player, an explanation and a button will appear that you simply click to cause the installer to run. On Windows machines, the installer will automatically find the Web Player on the Stagecast Web site, download it to your computer, and set the browser's parameters appropriately. You do not have to restart your computer or, in most cases, even your browser. It may still take several minutes to download the Web Player on a slow modem, but you can download it once and use it to play any number of simulations.

13. Creator 1 compatibility

Files created with Creator 1 are called worlds and are named with the suffix .world. Files created with Creator 2 are called sims and are named with the suffix .sim. While Creator 1 can open only worlds, Creator 2 can open both worlds and sims, ensuring the continued viability of your existing simulations.

14. Runs on Solaris and Linux workstations in addition to Windows and Mac PC's (including Windows XP and MacOS X)

15. Reliability and Performance

Numerous bug fixes and performance enhancements. Example: Although most .world files were under 100 kilobytes in size, some worlds with several stages containing complex background images required several megabytes of disk space. Creator 2 uses a different image compression technique that often helps. In some cases, the improvement is dramatic--as much as an eight times reduction in size.