A VideoWorks-HyperCard connection. (evaluation)

A Video Works-HypeCard connection There are many things one wishes Hyper-Card could do that it doesn't. Animation falls into that category; so does color. And while we're at it, wouldn't it be nice to have a larger interactive area for those with larger screens?

HypeCard potentially is an excellent environment for developing software simulations. Unfortunately, only minimal animation sequences can be easily accomplished by HyperCard. Using HyperCard's abilities alone, you can't do more than animate the drawing of pictures. There also are stacks available in the public domain that allow you to simulate animation by moving selected portions of a bit map around on a card. Still, neither of these approaches offers true animation.

It's well-known that even a 24-bit video card can't bring color to HyperCard, and even a 21-inch monitor won't allow you more pixels to play with than what you can get on a Mac Plus.

But MacroMind's VideoWorks II HyperCard Driver offers all three! This 48-Kbyte resource is one of the more dazzing pieces of software announced at the Macworld show in January - and it was shipping, too! The Video Works Driver allows you to run a VideoWorks II movie from HyperCard with a one-line addition to a HyperTalk script.

The concept is simple, but the power is awesome. Films can be produced in full color and made to run anywhere on your Macintosh screen, on or off the card. You can even bring buttons outside the card and use them interactively.

How it works

The feat is accomplished by copying "VW Driver" to the same folder as either your HyperCard application or the stack that uses the driver and then installing the VWPlay external command (XCMD) into the stack from which you want to run animations.