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!

Oh yeah: I found out a program running native code can't load emulated plugins. This means the screensavers won't work at all on Intel machines.

This is unfortunate, so I think I will put together test versions that are universal binaries soon, and hopefully someone with an Intel processor can test them for me.

I had the same problem as others have mentioned with LostaEscher 1.2 showing the preview correct but only a white screen when actually running. I ended up grabbing LotsaEscher 1.1 from your /old/ directory and it works fine.

I'm running 10.4.5 on a 1.25ghz G4 dual, radeon 9600

True. I've just tried lotsaEscher 1.1 and it worked fine. No blank screen on actual screensaver mode, unlike it did on version 1.2. FYI, LotsaGlass 1.0 didn't work, though. Blank glass texture just as in version 1.1. Now I wonder what differences could there exist beteween LotsaEscher 1.1 and 1.2? :)

I think I'll stick to LotsaEscher 1.1 until matters settle down. A great relievance anyway.

Wishlist for LotsaEscher.

For the next version, would it be possible to include a random selection capability (image + to_and_fro + hither_and_thiher) to this control panel? A predetermined display time setting could also help switch between random images during screensaver session, for eg. if screensaver was configured to last for 30 min and LotsaEscher random display time for 5 min, we could expect to see 6 random images displayed during all session.

You can safely discard this idea in case you consider it unnecessary. Cheers. :)

No one work here.
I tried lotsaEacher, lotsaWater and lotsaGlass and all work fine in preview bur when screen saver really start didn't work.
lotsaEacher show a white screen, lotsaGlass show the texture white and lotsawater show a black screen.
This is very wierd, because all work fine before I erase my hard disk .

Please, help me fix this problem, i love the lotsaWater screen saver.

My computer is a iMac 2.1GHz , Mac OS 10.4.5.

Cheers

Happy to hear you are working on a universal binary version of Lotsawater. (Lotsawater is the first screensaver that made activate the sreensaving option ever). If I can help testing it, please send an email: lieven.baeten at gmail.com

hey bluejay, i am having a similar problem with the milky blob, where it only works in test mode but not real time.

could you explain how you fixed the problem with that tool you mentioned?

thx

well I´ve got the same problem..., when activating the screensaver from hot corner...screen goes black.., and doesn´t work in the normal way either..., I´m ruuning an Imac G5 with Tiger 10.4.5....I just love this!!!!!

lotsa water desktop option works fine now i upgraded to 10.4.5, thank you. how about an option where only the desktop picture gets put under water leaving the menu and dock the same. this makes for a much more realistic effect i think especially if the desktop is of a blocked drain or bath etc.... Anyway, just a suggestion.

keep up the good work.

>>110

I tried to add an option to load just the desktop background, but just that turned out far more complex than I though, due to the desktop image seldom being the same size as the screen, and there being several different resizing and tiling modes, so I kind of lost interest.

The way around this problem for me was to use Xback which lets you use any screensaver as a desktop.It gave me the effect I wanted.

So thanks again for your great work.

Hi,
I got this this(see image) in the preview window. How is this possible.
comp. is a Computer-model: Power Mac G4 (AGP-video)
Processor-type: PowerPC G4 (2.9) 400 MHz
video-card is : ATY,Rage128Pro: 16 MB
I guess Quartz Extreme does not work.
Is that the problem? Only a g4 with altivec was needed?

>>114

You didn't say which screensaver it is, but I'm guessing the ATI Rage128 Pro is the problem, especially if it's LotsaWater.

The screensaver is LotsaWater yes.
Is ATI Rage128 Pro and its 16 Mb of memory the problem?
What a pity. I have seen LotsaWater on a G5 and it looked swell.

Thanks

Well, it sure took me some time, but I've finally managed to both create universal binaries for all the screensavers, and produce what I hope is a fix for the white-texture bug!

http://wakaba.c3.cx/releases/mac/LotsaEscher1.3.zip
http://wakaba.c3.cx/releases/mac/LotsaGlass1.2.zip
http://wakaba.c3.cx/releases/mac/LotsaSnow1.2.zip
http://wakaba.c3.cx/releases/mac/LotsaWater1.4.zip

The Intel versions are however not yet optimized for SSE. This shouldn't be too big a problem, since the Intel Macs should be fast enough to run them without much trouble even without optimizations, but do report problems, if any.

There are some more release notes for some minor features listed here: http://wakaba.c3.cx/s/lotsablankers/

The new version of LotsaGlass is now working on my iMac G5. No more white blobs. I love you!

Just in case any screen saver programmers ever have the same problem with white textures, and manage to Google up this thread: The problem was that

[NSImageRep imageRepWithContentsOfFile:path];

for some reason doesn't work, and returns nil when run by ScreenSaverEngine (but does work when run by System Preferences). However,

[NSBitmapImageRep imageRepWithData:[NSData dataWithContentsOfFile:path]];

does work just fine in both cases. This makes no sense whatsoever, and is most likely an OS X bug.

I just installed Lotsa Water...and it is completely amazing. Great Job. Thanks!!

I wanted to install Lotsawater on my Intel iMac but it won't work. Is that due to the new intel processor?
I've seen it on my friend's (older) iMac and it looks fantastic!!!!

I've just installed LotsWater on my brand new Intel MacBook, and when I ask the screensaver to use a custom image, I just get a blank screen with waves on top of it (it works ok when using the desktop picture, but as I lock the screensaver, I would just get a black screen then)...

Did you give it a picture to use?

Great screensavers and work perfectly under Intel (macbook pro).

A feature request: :-)
Allowing a folder of pictures to be used for LotsWater. It gets pretty boring seeing myself all day swiming.. ;)

Reading this thread is amazing. Some of you commented that your wife/girlfriend can't stand the screensaver.

My girlfriend hates it. Wierd huh! This is by far the coolest screensaver I've ever seen.
Cheers

I have only this to say:

LotsaGlass is the coolest thing ever created by a human.

Really enjoying LotsaWater thanks!
Is it possible to have an option to recapture the desktop at selectable timed intervals (say every 30 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes, etc). This way one could see new emails coming in, that type of thing, without having to deactivate the screen saver.

Really enjoying LotsaWater thanks!
Is it possible to have an option to recapture the desktop at selectable timed intervals (say every 30 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes, etc). This way one could see new emails coming in, that type of thing, without having to deactivate the screen saver.

>>131

I don't think there's a way to do this without first deactivitating the screensaver. That would look horribly distracting so I am not so keen on doing it.

If somebody can prove me wrong on that, I'd be most interested in hearing it, though.

>>133

This would indeed be a neat feature. Somebody else also suggested using the acceleration sensor in laptops to affect the water. I like both, but I have neither, so actually writing it would be tricky. I guess connecting a microphone might not be too hard, though, but I won't be doing it right away.

Thanks ! I was just about to cancel my iMac Jack Bauer edition (24 ") but you saved the day !!!
;0

YOU ROCK!!!! I WAS LOOKING FOR UPDATED INTEL VERSIONS -- MY FAV LOTS OF WATER NOT BEING ABLE TO USE ON MY NEW MAC. BLAH, THEN I RE-DISCOVERED YOU.

GRATZ,

I'M DANCIN!

Sorry about the caps. Doh!

Are you quite sure about that nickname?

hi to every body; i downloaded all your scrennsavers; but lotsawater does not work and lotsaglass shows the lotsaescher images; I have a G3 700 ibook with 10.4.8 system;the other lots work fine; thanks for your job

>>139

Some of them do not work without a G4.

When I try to use another picture than the desktop, I only got a blank, white screen. I can drag a picture into the picture option, but when clicking OK, it turns white, and the screensaver only show a white page with the water on.

>>141

What kind of machine are you doing this on? And can you post an image that has this problem?

I have an iBook G4, 1,25 ghz.
I found that I had to scale the picture to the screensize (1024x768) and then it worked.

>>143

That probably means the image was larger than your graphics card could handle. It doesn't have to be exactly the screensize, but it has to be small enough to fit in a texture (This may mean 1024x1024 or 2048x2048, depending on graphics card).

It seems that this Lotsawater have stopped working for me since I've updated to 10.4.8 (Intel mac). It may be due to recent updates in the open gl libraries? Now, every time I try to preview it (even from the System preferences pane) it gives me a Panic and I have to restart. It would be great if you can check this out. Thanks for a great piece of software!

>>145

I just got an Intel iMac, and it's running 10.4.8, and LotsaWater is running fine. However, a kernel panic is most likely an Apple bug. Maybe you should try reporting it to them?

Hmm, I have a MacBook Pro running 10.4.8 and running LotsaWater well! Anyway we can get a better optimized one hopefully in the next revision (optimized for SSE)?

It's not like it really matters anymore. LotsaWater takes 10% of one CPU core on my MBP.

A small update for all the screensavers. Thanks to Christopher Li at http://bridge1.com/, there are now Japanese localizations of all the screensavers. There is also a fix for a visual bug on in LotsaGlass on Intel machines.

http://wakaba.c3.cx/releases/mac/LotsaEscher1.3j.zip
http://wakaba.c3.cx/releases/mac/LotsaGlass1.2j.zip
http://wakaba.c3.cx/releases/mac/LotsaSnow1.2j.zip
http://wakaba.c3.cx/releases/mac/LotsaWater1.4j.zip

I just love LotsaWater! It´s so smoothly rendered I can´t even continue working (although I really should!).

Anyway: You know what would be nice? If you coud add some support for sudden motion sensors! So if you smack your MBP / PB / MB / IB LotsaWater will react by rendering ripples from the corresponding side of the screen. That´d be fun! Do you even know what I´m talking about? Sorry, my Englisch is really bad...

Greets,
Sven

>>151

Yes, somebody has suggested this before, too. It's a great idea, I think, but the problem is that I do not have a laptop to develop the code on.

A cool feature would be if the desktop dont freeze. I want live update of the desktop under the water :D (as in dashboard, when adding widgets for example)

>>153

I really want that too, but I don't think it is possible, sadly. I'd be happy to be proved wrong, though.

I really like lotsasnow, especially to have snow fall over my desktop. However, is it possible to integrrate it with itunes, so that you can see which song is being played?? Would make it perfect!

lotsofwater is very beautiful. It would be cool if you had the option to let a fish swim over your desktop (viewpoint from above of course) !

I love Lotsa Water and I was thinking of a way you could make it even cooler. Is there any way you can program Lotsa Water to show a "reflection" of you in the water with the help of an iSight camera?

I think it'd be really cool if the lotsasnow screensaver piled up the fallen snow on the bottom of the screen. That'd be such a cool effect!

Just thought I'd say thanks for the escher screen saver. I've linked to it from my blog at web.mac.com/mikedavidson

I love your snow and water screensavers!

A suggestion on lotsasnow - can the flakes be smaller? I have a large monitor so they show up huge! Also, how about the ability to put a slide show behind the snow - user chosen pics, etc. (of winter scenes of course!)

Great work!

Will there be a Windows port for this screensaver?

>>161 I think we can safely rule that out.

i haven't looked at the sources yet and i've never made a *nix screensaver before so i have no idea how difficult it would be, but i might try to make a *nix port of some of them when i have some free time...
no sane person actually uses windows for anything other than playing games anyway. and that's only because a lot of games won't run on anything other than windows.

I love this screensaver! But can it be modified to pick up new window that open while the screensaver is running (like IM windows)?

Is it possible to use the Lotsawater sources and add it to a realtime application (made with Xcode) ?

Possible? Sure. Easy? Depends on what you're trying to do.

. I have a problem.. first.. i not speak english jaja.. second problem... when start the lostawater screensaver my monitor only look white... Why?.. i can see the water.. but.. no my deskop..

i have OS X 10.3.9

I'm trying to put some 3d objets (opengl) inside the water (sea animals).

but I've failed to transform this screensaver to a stand-alone app using Xcode 2.4.

Can you guide me?

>>167

Your graphics card is probably too old.

>>168

Not without knowing what your problem is.

looks lovely with a water image. thank you!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sadalit/366886274/

Well, i would like to first know how to change it to an application.

Then i will try to add some xof or obj 3d object inside.

>>171

That's a very, very broad question. Why don't you try doing it, and then ask some more specific question if you run into trouble?

I'm a java developer, and xcode is not familiar to me.

I've tried to figure out how to modify the sources in xcode to build it as an app, but i get too many errors when compiling. :(

>>173

Well, your best bet is to create a new app from scratch, implement a basic OpenGL view and loop, and then copy parts of the LotsaWater code over. If you're unfamiliar with it, maybe you should run through some tutorials first.

Thanks for the tip, i will try that way. :)

Hi. I loff the lotsawater screensaver...is there any way to have it hide the system menubar and go "true" fullscreen??

thanks for any and all help with this...

sb

>>176

I'm not sure what you mean by "true fullscreen". It goes into fullscreen just like any other screensaver.

well...just so that the desktop image is displayed without the menubar at the top of the screen. :-)

similar to if you choose one of the standard screensavers....for example..RSS visualizer...

does that help?

i would love it if you could actually control the size of the water droplets. it looks a little weird having one drop take up more than half of a 24" display.

i'm really silly...i just figured out you can choose a custom picture...which will not and does not have the menubar at the top...only if you choose "snapshot" DUH!!

sorry for the confusion

Hi !WAHa.06x36,

I've spent 2 weeks trying to convert this screensaver to an application without success... :(

It would be so kind of you, if you could release it as an application with droplets made by mouse clicks. :)

It don't really know if it would take hours to do it, as i failed to convert the source code.

Thank you

I am using an iMac 20" Intel Core Duo and version 1.4 of LotsaWater with a custom picture that is correctly sized to my monitor resolution (1680x1050). Just as the screen saver starts up, the screen flashes white, then loads my custom image, then works correctly. When exiting the screensaver, there is NO flash before returning to the desktop. I don't think this is the same "white screen" problem listed above. Any ideas? I alos like the idea of controlling the dropsize. Thanks, dave

it seems liek whenever i use "desktop screenshot" and "require password to stop screensaver" all i get is water falling on a black screen
(g4)

is that unfixable?

>>183

Yes, it is a security feature of OS X.

so much to be read, so dont know if anyone suggested yet but it would be pretty damn cool if one made a screensaver in the LotsaGlass style but so that it could use iSight image in the animation, like the reflection of the glass or something. I wish i could do that but i'm afraid dont have enuff knowledge to program anything :)

A programming question on the LotsaWater saver -- how hard would it be to remove the water effect, and constantly update the screenshot (say, once every few seconds)?

If it could be made to work, it would be very, very ugly.

Is there any chance to have Lotsawater in a Windows version. This is the very best screensaver I've ever seen!!!

Not really, unless somebody else feels like making it. I do have an ancient version that was developed on a Windows machine but it's lacking some features and is not polished to be very usable...

it would be really cool if it could automatically update the screen capture periodically, so you could have it running but still be able to glance at the screen and see new messages or growl notifications. Is this something that could be possible?

>>190, see >>186,187

>>190
I'd rather have a screensaver that shows the last X growl notifications.

I love LottaEscher: thank you.

You may have these new Screenshots I made for you.

Please transfer them to your server.

http://seamac.info/cupboard/darkroom/shotfromscreens/LotsaEscher001l%2001f.gif

http://seamac.info/cupboard/darkroom/shotfromscreens/LotsaEscher001l%2001n.gif

http://seamac.info/cupboard/darkroom/shotfromscreens/LotsaEscher001l%2001s.gif

I can make many more of these if you like using Copernicus/GraphicConverter/and QuickTime Pro 7.

Santa

PS they are animated GIF screenshots of LottaEscher!

You Said they have to see it in motion to appreciate it .... well: replace the screenshot on your LottaEscher page with this image.

To Make your OWN: Use the movie region function on the Preview window with Copernicus / Movie to Image Sequence export from QT 7 Pro / and GraphicConverter Stitches the frames together with one click using Convert and Modify

The above upload is Fast: this upload is Slow.

HO-Ho-ho!

Hi,

I've just bought a new iMac (running Leopard) & whilst looking for a some eyecandy to show it off I found your fabulous LotsaWater screensaver!

I'm pleased to report that it's working fine under Leopard and would like to make one small suggestion: allowing the option to apply a tint to the saved desktop image as well as dimming it would be the final touch.

Thanks for a great screensaver.

Ted

hi, your screen savers are amazing, but i sadly don't have a mac, i still have windows (uugggh), is there a way i can get it to work for windows?

The custom picture doesn't work! Can anyone help me?

Hi, big lotsawater fan here. Recently, like today, when I go to activate it, all I get is a white screen. I've been told that this is because of a corrupted kext file? But I figured I should come to the "source" to see if there's any solution. I'm running a Quad Core Mac pro with 10.5, 4gb of ram, and all the fixins.

Thanks

Hi, big lotsawater fan here. Recently, like today, when I go to activate it, all I get is a white screen. I've been told that this is because of a corrupted kext file? But I figured I should come to the "source" to see if there's any solution. I'm running a Quad Core Mac pro with 10.5, 4gb of ram, and all the fixins.

Thanks

Ok, Good news. I was able to run Cocktail, which is a free(er) version of Tinkertoolsys. After wiping all caches, rebuilding launch services, and restarting, everything seems to be working.