XScreenSaver 5.36

7 years ago


XScreenSaver 5.36 is out now!

Five new hacks this time, all by me: discoball, cubetwist, cubestack, splodesic and hexstrut. Plus some other stuff.

(You can always tell that my business is in a disastrous, sphincter-puckering freefall when I start spending a lot of time writing screen savers to distract myself from it. Hooray.)

Anyway, I'm particularly fond of how splodesic came out. It's blows up very soothingly and the colors are nice.

Fun fact: discoball was inspired by one very particular broke-ass, dusty disco ball at a local concert venue, which I have been staring up at a few times a month for many years. See if you can guess which. I'm not a fan of disco balls. I think they are the world's cheesiest lighting instrument, just a step up from christmas tree lights stuffed in a plastic bag. Consider this saver to be my editorial on that topic.

The iOS and Android versions are out now too.

If you're an Android developer, we could use your help sanding down the remaining rough edges on that port. The android/README contains a todo list.

Tags: , , , , ,
Current Music: Duran Duran -- The Chauffeur ♬

10 Responses:

  1. rcurtis says:
    7 years ago at 12:38 pm

    Very cool. Thanks for this new release!

    My favourite is Hexstrut. Watching the hexagons decompose into Y struts the first time was a pleasant surprise. I like that the grid "burns" from random points rather than simple directional wipes. What inspired this one?

    Splodesic looks like a bauble in (disastrous, sphincter-puckering) nervous breakdown. Just in time for the holidays!
    • jwz says:
      7 years ago at 12:40 pm

      I saw an anim gif of something like hexstrut once, but flat and symmetrical. So I upped the voltage.

      Glad you like it!
  2. Kyzer says:
    7 years ago at 2:22 pm

    cubetwist reminds me of one of the effects in Pygmy Project's 1993 Amiga demo Extension.
  3. RandomSad(but.happily) EyeBallZ says:
    7 years ago at 12:58 am

    jwz, you're monster - this soundtrack is ripping my inner childs/processess processess tree... ou...o.o so, this is Xmass Tree then? o.o
  4. dz-015 says:
    7 years ago at 4:36 am

    Dear LazyWeb,

    I'm a longtime fan of XScreenSaver on Linux and more recently Mac and iOS. My favorites are CubicGrid, Strange, Compass, Gleidescope, RDbomb, and Substrate. My niece and nephew are huge fans of BouncingCow.

    I used to run saver modules on the Mac with SaverLab.

    SaverLab runs Mac OS X screensaver modules in regular windows. It allows you to run multiple modules simultaneously, pause, single step, and control the speed of the animations, and save animations as QuickTime movies.

    However, the latest version (1.7.3, Nov 25 2005) stopped working when I upgraded from OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) to 10.10 (Yosemite) and it's still busted in 10.11 (El Capitan). The source is available on the author's website http://www.dozingcatsoftware.com if someone wanted to take a crack at it and bring a great utility back to life.

    Here's the errors I see in the SaverLab console:

    objc[6251]: Class InvertedSlider is implemented in both /Library/Screen Savers/Qix.saver/Contents/MacOS/Qix and /Library/Screen Savers/Apollonian.saver/Contents/MacOS/Apollonian. One of the two will be used. Which one is undefined.
    objc[6251]: Class GlobalDefaults is implemented in both /Library/Screen Savers/Qix.saver/Contents/MacOS/Qix and /Library/Screen Savers/Apollonian.saver/Contents/MacOS/Apollonian. One of the two will be used. Which one is undefined.
    objc[6251]: Class PrefsReader is implemented in both /Library/Screen Savers/Qix.saver/Contents/MacOS/Qix and /Library/Screen Savers/Apollonian.saver/Contents/MacOS/Apollonian. One of the two will be used. Which one is undefined.
    objc[6251]: Class SimpleXMLNode is implemented in both /Library/Screen Savers/Qix.saver/Contents/MacOS/Qix and /Library/Screen Savers/Apollonian.saver/Contents/MacOS/Apollonian. One of the two will be used. Which one is undefined.
    objc[6251]: Class TextModeTransformer is implemented in both /Library/Screen Savers/Qix.saver/Contents/MacOS/Qix and /Library/Screen Savers/Apollonian.saver/Contents/MacOS/Apollonian. One of the two will be used. Which one is undefined.
    objc[6251]: Class XScreenSaverConfigSheet is implemented in both /Library/Screen Savers/Qix.saver/Contents/MacOS/Qix and /Library/Screen Savers/Apollonian.saver/Contents/MacOS/Apollonian. One of the two will be used. Which one is undefined.
    objc[6251]: Class XScreenSaverView is implemented in both /Library/Screen Savers/Qix.saver/Contents/MacOS/Qix and /Library/Screen Savers/Apollonian.saver/Contents/MacOS/Apollonian. One of the two will be used. Which one is undefined.
    objc[6251]: Class XScreenSaverGLView is implemented in both /Library/Screen Savers/Qix.saver/Contents/MacOS/Qix and /Library/Screen Savers/Apollonian.saver/Contents/MacOS/Apollonian. One of the two will be used. Which one is undefined.

    Any ideas?
    • jwz says:
      7 years ago at 12:22 pm

      I don't know about SaverLab, but if you build xscreensaver from source, there's a SaverTester app in there that lets you run them in a window.

Comments are closed because this post is 7 years old.