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Highlights

Stagecast Software provides tools that enable the creation, play and modification of interactive and engaging simulations, models, games, stories, and lessons, collectively called "sims". Simple enough for kids yet powerful enough for teenagers or adults to simulate complex concepts, Stagecast Creator is used at home, in school and professionally. Sims can be played on a Web page, downloaded for local play on Windows, Macintosh and UNIX computers, or distributed on CD-ROM. They can be delivered in a form that allows customers to make changes and additions.

Stagecast Creator

The authoring tool features a user-friendly graphical interface that makes it easy for users to create characters, give them appearances and make rules of behavior. To go beyond the basics, features which let users create variables, additional stages and more are just a mouse-click away. Read more about Stagecast Creator. Check out the sims that kids and educators have made. View the system requirements. Once you purchase the product or download the Evaluation Version of the software, you'll be on your way to making your own cool games, interactive stories and lessons.

Stagecast Creator is available now in Home and Education editions. A professional version of this tool, Stagecast Creator Pro, is in beta test. Stagecast Creator is Java-based. Simulations can be played as Java applications or applets.

Stagecast Player

The free, lightweight Player runs within a web browser window. It will run any simulation created with the authoring tool. The Player is not required for sims hosted on a web site that uses our advanced InstantSim™ Server.

Pricing

The home edition of Creator is priced at $49.95. View the price list for full details.

An Education Edition with multi-user pricing is available for those who will be using Creator in schools, computer walk-in centers, libraries, etc. 

For pricing on business products, including Stagecast Creator Pro and InstantSim Server, please email us at sales@stagecast.com or call 1-650-599-0399.

Benefits

Ease of Use

Stagecast products allow users to exercise their creativity and thinking skills without having to learn a complex development tool. Through the use of a graphical human interface, Stagecast Creator enables users to create and modify interactive visual simulations. Users create the characters in the simulation and program their behavior, the rules by which they interact. The resulting creation is referred to as a sim or application. The ease with which this is accomplished is demonstrated by the age range of users, beginning with kids five years of age through adult.

Platform Independence with Java

Stagecast Creator, Stagecast Player, and InstantSim Server are all written in Java. Stagecast chose Java to easily deliver products that will run on a variety of platforms, including Windows, Mac OS and UNIX. Creations may be run either standalone or in a networked web browser such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Enhanced Learning

The process of authoring with Stagecast tools and the resulting visual applications both enhance the learning experience. An author employs critical thinking skills in the development and implementation of theories or games. Visually displaying a concept increases comprehension and the ability to master a topic. Users get immediate feedback as they create new rules or apply them. The familiar computing environment becomes a vehicle for education and communication as well as entertainment.

Underlying Technology

How it Works

Stagecast's products allow children and adults to build their own simulations and games and to publish their creations in a Web page. The basics of creating an application are quite simple: kids create objects, animate them and make them interact. The objects can be made to do different things depending on what objects are around them, as well as depending on user-defined properties of those objects, such as weight, energy level or speed. By defining these properties for the objects and writing rules for the objects' behavior, kids create interesting multimedia simulations complete with key-controlled interaction and sound effects. Along the way, they internalize fundamental object-oriented programming concepts like generalization, specialization, and the bundling of behavior with state into objects.

Stagecast's products build upon an Apple Computer technology formerly known as "Cocoa", adding a number of valuable enhancements. For more information about Cocoa and its applications, Macintosh users may visit Stagecast's Cocoa Download page or http://www.kidsdomain.com/down/mac/cocoa.html.

Note that Apple, having licensed the technology to Stagecast, does not support the former Cocoa. Apple now uses their trademark Cocoa to designate an unrelated technology used by software engineers to develop general applications for Mac OS X.