I got bored at using the Substrate screensaver after a few years. I also decided that Haiku needed something more unique, not a port or reinterpretation of some other OS’ screensaver.
The result of a few hours of hacking around J. Tarbell’s algorithms (a great source of inspiration), is the new screensaver Neon Lights!
You can donwload it from the github page: https://github.com/pulkomandy/neonlights (go in the release tab and get the zip). To install it, simply extract the zip in ~/config/non-packaged/add-ons/Screen\ Savers.
I tried to make the initial speed adjust to the display resolution but I only tested on 1366x768. I will see how to adjust it so it fills the screen also at higher resolutions.
It needs careful tweaking, otherwise the particles all stay in a group in the middle, or run very far away out of the screen. I’ll see if I can find something that works at most resolutions.
Today screensaver is just some spangle to OS.
If would be possible to add some desktop wallpaper mode to Haiku screensavers, maybe with some access to it from music players too. It would be a useful addition.
You can’t shackel the devs down and say “Code this!” It just doesn’t work that way.
I did not say that this is something else to do, I just said my opinion, which calls
into question, from my point of view that a Screensaver is not really
important for the OS.
You are right, it is not useful to “save the screen” as it used to be in the early days of burn-in on monochrome CRTs. It does not really have an use, except for being a place where coders can express their creativity and artistic sense.
Now I will try to not get too hypnotized by it and continue to work on real problems. We will soon have a package buildbot for x86_64 to complement our package build infrastructure. One more step towards the beta1.
Actually screensavers not needed even for CRTs, 'cause all of them can automatically go to standby — I have Samsung 19" CRT as second monitor 'cause there’s no LCD/LED/Plasma which can produce such live colors — but screensavers useful as demo of graphic capabilities.
At the and, why not?
This particular screensaver might be just an artistic expression, but there’s no reason why that has to be the case. Remember the old SETI@home screensaver?
Ohh… I feel so… Umm, Eh? This is what my ScreenSaver Preferences looks like:
I don’t see any special part of the screen indicated, unless my peception is quite different from yours! (The panel BTW is identical for me in BeOS.) The “Forbidden” sign is odd, but that has always been there.
Click in that little picture of a screen to set the corner where the mouse triggers things. The BeOS preferences look like this when a corner is selected.
Yes, the idea is to prevent the computer going to sleep. For example, when you are watching a movie with software that doesn’t already lock the screensaver, or when you are giving a talk and don’t want the screensaver to pop while you spend too much time on a slide, or you are viewing some schematics for an electronics device you are assembling… In these cases you just put the mouse pointer in the chosen corner, and that is enough to temporarily disable the screensaver.
(The panel BTW is identical for me in BeOS.) The “Forbidden” sign is odd, but that has always been there.