Screensaver?

snoopy · Post by **snoopy** » Wed Dec 15, 2004 11:44 pm

What screen savers do you guys use, and what does one have to do these days to just get a .scr file that doesn't have all the spyware crap piggybacked on it? (I'm looking for something new and good)

Grendel · Post by **Grendel** » Wed Dec 15, 2004 11:46 pm

Swarm & D3 saver

Top Gun · Post by **Top Gun** » Wed Dec 15, 2004 11:55 pm

D3 Saver x 2

snoopy · Post by **snoopy** » Thu Dec 16, 2004 12:00 am

Looks like the D3 saver looks for Reg keys that don't exist on my comp to decide if descent is installed or not- anyone have those key by chance?

Duper · Post by **Duper** » Thu Dec 16, 2004 2:05 am

Matrix Emulator if I use one at all. Typically don't though unless I'm locking down the computer for some reason.

Vindicator · Post by **Vindicator** » Thu Dec 16, 2004 5:30 am

Default Windows XP screensaver. Never found a need for anything else. I am boring.

DCrazy · Post by **DCrazy** » Thu Dec 16, 2004 5:31 am

Vindicator wrote:Default Windows XP screensaver. Never found a need for anything else. I am boring.

Nitrofox125 · Post by **Nitrofox125** » Thu Dec 16, 2004 8:05 am

Cycling half the library from www.skins.be

CDN_Merlin · Post by **CDN_Merlin** » Thu Dec 16, 2004 8:06 am

turn power off. I haven't used a SS in ages.

aldel · Post by **aldel** » Thu Dec 16, 2004 9:01 am

Well, how about that, people do still use screensavers. Now if I could just get them to pay for them...

snoopy wrote:Looks like the D3 saver looks for Reg keys that don't exist on my comp to decide if descent is installed or not- anyone have those key by chance?

It uses the value named "Path" under key "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\Descent 3.exe", which I believe is always defined if D3 is installed (am I wrong?) It needs this value to find d3.hog, which contains all the objects and textures.

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Thu Dec 16, 2004 9:06 am

I shut my monitor off or set power management to do it after 10 minutes of idle

aldel · Post by **aldel** » Thu Dec 16, 2004 9:09 am

Actually I'd been meaning to advertise my new screensaver here. It runs Conway's game of life on the surface of a torus. It's really cool looking and has worked on every machine I've tried it on, but when my wife tried to run it at work it crashed her machine, so I'd appreciate it if lots of people would try it out and let me know if it doesn't work.

download page

Screen shot:

Topher · Post by **Topher** » Thu Dec 16, 2004 10:26 am

oo, that's teh cool!

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Thu Dec 16, 2004 10:28 am

What, do all the red dots simulate like, cities or something?

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Thu Dec 16, 2004 11:21 am

No screen saver, monitors power off when idle.

Foil · Post by **Foil** » Thu Dec 16, 2004 12:24 pm

Sweet!

(And it works fine on my system, running Win2000.)

My degree is in Pure (Theoretical) Mathematics, so I know about Conway's Game of Life, and how it works.

I'd never thought of putting the game on any other surfaces. Have you gotten any weird results, or found any stable patterns which would not be possible on the standard plane? Hmm......

KompresZor · Post by **KompresZor** » Thu Dec 16, 2004 1:22 pm

Krom wrote:No screen saver, monitors power off when idle.

x2
I haven't used a screen saver in a long time.

Mobius · Post by **Mobius** » Thu Dec 16, 2004 1:37 pm

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Thu Dec 16, 2004 3:05 pm

Mobius wrote:SETI

Don't use it as a screen saver, makes it slower.

aldel · Post by **aldel** » Thu Dec 16, 2004 3:24 pm

Foil wrote:I'd never thought of putting the game on any other surfaces. Have you gotten any weird results, or found any stable patterns which would not be possible on the standard plane? Hmm......

Actually, Life on a torus is equivalent to Life on an infinite plane, with an infinite repeating pattern of live and dead cells. But there are a few things that typical Life simulators can't handle, since they don't support infinite numbers of live cells (funny how that works). For example, a single row of live cells, extending infinitely in both directions, leads to an interesting pattern of moving and colliding lines.

Unfortunately my screensaver can only start with randomness, not predefined interesting patterns. I'll have to fix that in a future version. For now you can experiment with infinite repeating patterns using a Life simulator that supports wraparound at the edges. I don't know if this is a very common feature; I haven't looked. One program I know of that supports it is this one, which I wrote in high school. It runs under MS-DOS and is a bit short on features, but you can't complain about the download size.

I'm not sure how well Life would work on any surface other than a 2D plane or a torus. I don't think there's any other surface that can be divided up into a rectangular grid, where every cell has exactly eight neighbors. Is this wrong? Would a double torus work? I'm having trouble visualizing it and I don't have any double tori lying around to draw on.

Will Robinson · Post by **Will Robinson** » Thu Dec 16, 2004 3:26 pm

some 3d xp thingy it's not bad for a corporate logo kind of thing, runs real smooth and it's a total waste of wattage which is truly american

Tricord · Post by **Tricord** » Thu Dec 16, 2004 3:27 pm

Krom wrote:No screen saver, monitors power off when idle.

x3

suicide eddie · Post by **suicide eddie** » Thu Dec 16, 2004 3:53 pm

i use fishymouse, its cute

http://www.geocities.com/wheelsmith2000/fishmaus.zip

Sage · Post by **Sage** » Thu Dec 16, 2004 6:42 pm

3D Christmas in the City:
http://msn.computeractive.co.uk/downloa ... ks/1159928

a rather fine screensaver in light of the holiday spirit.

the programmers that made it must have been bad though, because it doesn't run decent on anything above 640x480. And the music that it's supposed to loop craps out after about and hour. Then it starts repeating the last 5 seconds of the song over and over...

I still like it though!

I also really like Sea Storm 3D:
http://www.voodoofiles.com/8054

(i'm a bandwidth theft)

Vindicator · Post by **Vindicator** » Thu Dec 16, 2004 7:01 pm

aldel wrote:Actually I'd been meaning to advertise my new screensaver here. It runs Conway's game of life on the surface of a torus. It's really cool looking and has worked on every machine I've tried it on, but when my wife tried to run it at work it crashed her machine, so I'd appreciate it if lots of people would try it out and let me know if it doesn't work.

On my dual monitor machine the torus is never displayed on only one monitor. Its always on both screens (with one half displayed on each monitor), and it never bounces more than about halfway across each monitor.

where the green line is the division in the monitors. It stays in that general area. Otherwise it works fine on my XP pro machine.

Hattrick · Post by **Hattrick** » Thu Dec 16, 2004 7:08 pm

Krom wrote:No screen saver, monitors power off when idle.

X4

Xamindar · Post by **Xamindar** » Thu Dec 16, 2004 10:15 pm

why, xscreensaver of course!

roid · Post by **roid** » Fri Dec 17, 2004 12:51 am

i just installed your screeensaver aldel, it works great and i htink i'll keep it for a little while. i llike it

this is what i do with screensavers, i'll use them for a few weeks then tire of them and just go back to turning the screen off, which is how it's generally always setup. (ie: that matrix screensaver that was going around, lasted a week, then back to screen shutdown

)

(haha, my mother demanded i install it on her pc as well, it's spreading liek cheeze on fire)

BUBBALOU · Post by **BUBBALOU** » Fri Dec 17, 2004 7:17 am

I use only one screen saver Xp Screensaver , looks cool, no bs

Sligar · Post by **Sligar** » Fri Dec 17, 2004 12:31 pm

Arg, D3 saver doesn't work for me, it just draws a bunch of dots. I checked the path in the registry and that looks ok, I wonder what the deal is? Is it an XP thing?

Top Gun · Post by **Top Gun** » Fri Dec 17, 2004 4:53 pm

It works fine in XP for me, and I know it's not XP-exclusive. Did you check all of the options for it? Enabling/disabling some of them might do the trick.

Arbitar · Post by **Arbitar** » Fri Dec 17, 2004 4:56 pm

lol I use the "NO Saver" ... its no screensaver all the time. No really. I hate screensavers.

Nitrofox125 · Post by **Nitrofox125** » Fri Dec 17, 2004 6:23 pm

Is it possible to get burn-in on LCD monitors period?

aldel · Post by **aldel** » Fri Dec 17, 2004 7:11 pm

Sligar wrote:Arg, D3 saver doesn't work for me, it just draws a bunch of dots. I checked the path in the registry and that looks ok, I wonder what the deal is? Is it an XP thing?

Is D3 installed and working properly? And do you have decent OpenGL drivers installed? That's all I can think of that might be wrong.