Not to be confused with the Mac OS X widgets thread, this is the Mac OS X screen savers thread (this one's even more useless!).

So, way back in the day, I made some screen savers for the Amiga named "LotsaBlankers". Later on, I ported some of them to Windows, and created some new ones, but I never managed to make a stable and functional enough screen saver under Windows that I'd feel like releasing it. But now that I've got Mac OS X, I've started porting some of this old code over, since making screen savers for OS X is pretty easy and fun. First one I've got running is this one:

http://wakaba.c3.cx/releases/mac/LotsaEscher.zip

It's based on the work presented on this site, http://escherdroste.math.leidenuniv.nl/, and it is liable to BLOW YOUR MIND, MAAAAN. I've been too lazy to figure out how to make a preferences GUI for it yet, so even though the code supports all the possible different transformations of the image (Some listed here: http://escherdroste.math.leidenuniv.nl/index.php?menu=im&sub=escher), you can't actually pick which one you want yet.

There's likely to be more to come. Enjoy!

I really should add a screenshot for this, as nobody wants to download screensavers if they don't know what they look like.

It's not quite the same unless you see it in motion, though.

Also, I finished porting another one:

http://wakaba.c3.cx/releases/mac/LotsaSnow.zip

This one draws snowflakes falling down your screen. Simple enough, but the oh-so-clever part is that it uses a semi-physical model (that I pulled out of my ass) for growing each snowflake, meaning every snowflake is unique (as well they should be!) and also that it uses a quite a bit of processing power. But that's the price you pay for indivduality!

http://wakaba.c3.cx/releases/mac/LotsaEscher1.1.zip

Now features a disgustingly cute options sheet, where you can configure the speed, and the transformation type!

Covertly made a bugfix or two without bumping the version number. If you had any problems with ugly tearing at high speeds, re-download.

Once again, a new screensaver! I love making these things.

http://wakaba.c3.cx/releases/mac/LotsaWater1.0.zip

This time, it's a fairly realistic simulation of water, distorting your desktop. It eats quite a lot of processing power, especially if you turn up the detail level, so beware.

Big thanks to MrVacBob for help with Altivec optimizations for this one.

Oh yeah: If anyone wants source to try and port these, or just to otherwise play around with, just ask. I'm just too lazy clean it up and package it for each release.

I love the LotsaWater screen saver. When it runs, the background gets duplicated, giving me a tiled look. Have you heard of this before? Is there a way to fix it?
I'm running it on a powermac g5 with tiger.

I heard someone mention something similar, but I have no idea what causes it... Do you have multiple monitors?

Also, if you can take a screenshot and post it, that would also help. Try opening up Terminal, and typing in this command:

sleep 10; screencapture snap.jpg

That should wait 10 seconds (change it to however long you need), and then take a screenshot. If you start the screensaver in the meantime, it will take a screenshot of that, and you can post it here.

I get the same thing. (I only have one monitor.) Here's what it looks like in the 'Screensavers' control panel:

and here's what the full screen looks like when the screensaver is activated:

I suppose for good nature I should show you what my screen looks like normally.

The first version of this screensaver that you showed me didn't have this problem, incidentally.

I love what you did with this screensaver. It works fine with the G4 at work but, it displays rather strange on my dual 2.5 G5 at home. I have an Apple aluminium 20" display. When it runs it simply mutiplies the desktop with odd patterns not the one mentioned above. It's to bad I was hoping to see this saver work with my 20" inch LCD display. Keep up the good work. My screen resolution is at 1680x1050.

Aaaargh! That was the most annoying bug ever to track down! I seem to have gotten it under control now, though:

http://wakaba.c3.cx/releases/mac/LotsaWater1.1.zip

Still not quite sure what was causing it. Strange OS X behaviour, I think.

hi,
i love your lotsawater too, and i use to force mi screensaver with a combination key, but the screen turn complitely black!!!
i suppose that the screenshot that the program take catch a blank screen and not my real wallpaper.
If i try from the prefpane everything is ok..
is it possible to fix it?
i would appreciate it..

thnx
p.

I guess that the program you use to start the screensaver makes the screen black before starting, or something along those lines.

Where can I download it? I could test and see what happens.

i use to start screensaver by a customized shortcut that launche the "lock screen" option in the keychain icon in the menubar...
thnx

Ah yes. The thing is, the Lock Screen option blanks the screen first, exactly to prevent screensavers from taking a screenshot. The idea is that if you lock your screen, you probably don't want anybody to see what's on it. So there's not really anything that can be done about that.

Although I must say that LotsaWater actually looks pretty cool running on a black screen.

i see... i used to do that cause i work in an open space, so when i stand up from my desk i need to lock (as windows system) with a pwd, i dont need to prevent others to not look on my desk, but just to not interact with it...

i did that shorcut by reading a hint on macosxhints, i wanted a fast shortcut to lock, and since macosx doesnt have that funciton, i did that...

hope my english isnt too bad ;-)

what do u suggest me? (i want your screensaver! ;-))

There's probably nothing that can be done with the current version if you want locking (unless you can find some hidden Mac OS feature to turn the blanking off).

In a future version, I might add support for using other pictures than the desktop as a background, but that won't happen until later.

No image selecting yet, but instead a fix for multi-monitor setups, as requested elsewhere (http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/19934):

http://wakaba.c3.cx/releases/mac/LotsaWater1.2.zip

Perfect! What ever you did to the code worked! Thanks. GREAT SCREENSAVER!

To those interested: I finally figured out what the problem was, and it's an OpenGL driver bug. I was (erroneously) trying to set my texture to GL_REPEAT, which the specs say should fail when using GL_TEXTURE_RECTANGLE_EXT. On my computer, it silently failed as it should, and the saver worked, because it didn't actually need this. But on certain other drivers, instead of detecting that something was wrong, it tried to set up the hardware with the erroneous settings, causing the weird patterns.

(It probably wrote width-1 and height-1 into some mask registers, which only works if width and height are powers of two.)

I just checked the webserver logs, and:

10000GET

10151 downloads of LotsaWater so far! PARTYTIME!

>>27 Wow. Are you pimping this elsewhere, or is it word-of-mouth?

>>27

The vast majority of downloads comes from macupdate.com. Apparently somebody added it there. I added Xee too just the other day, and downloads for that have gone way up too.

about my problem of the blank screen i was thinkin about this: there must be something in macosx that enable screensaver without makin the screen black, infact usin the active corners, the screensaver starts properly...

bye

>>30

Yes, but that's because it's not being started in locking mode. The black screen is an OS feature when locking the screen, to make sure there's no sensitive information visible when you lock the computer.

I love the Lotsawater screensaver so much I just want one feature added please. Can you add an option to use a custom image and not just a screengrab?? This way I can run the screensaver on the desktop (using Backlight 2) and that would be just perfect for me!!!

Many thanks.