Getting Started

You'll need to set up a development environment for creating multimedia titles. This involves acquiring the right software and hardware:

The Multimedia Development Kit (MDK) is the critical software package you'll need. The MDK includes multimedia extensions to Microsoft Windows, simple data preparation tools for editing/manipulating audio, images, and other data files, and the Multimedia Viewer for building text-based multimedia titles. You should also consider acquiring additional data preparation and development tools as necessary.

The system you use to build your application should be powerful, based on a 80386 microprocessor with at least 4 MB of RAM and at least an 80 MB hard drive. While you will use the same hardware components for sound, MIDI, and image display as those present in the standard Multimedia PC, all other components should be as high-performance as you can afford.

In addition, each chapter in this book discusses the types of hardware and software needed to prepare the different types of data used in your application.