This New App Brings 1990s 'After Dark' Screen Savers to Modern macOS

[FoxyKaye]

If you run this beta, you'll get a notification to update to the next stable release when it lands. If you want to continue opting in to additional beta releases, you can go to Settings -> Updates and toggle on the Beta update channel.

@Jeff Halter - OK, so far, here's my experience with the 1.0.2 Beta update:

* Totally solved the vertical monitor aspect ratio issue. I tested this with and without "pixel perfect" turned on.
* With "pixel perfect" turned on, there's vertical black bars on my horizontal monitor, but I think this is expected behavior?
* However, one downside is that the active screen saver running now freezes after a short, indeterminate period of time. I tested this using both "Preview" from the MacOS screensaver menu, and letting it click on while I was doing something else. In both cases, it freezes after 2-5 minutes. It *does* allow me to unlock from the frozen screensaver, so it isn't crashing the OS by my experience.

Hope this helps!

 

[Jeff Halter]

Thanks, I'll look into that. Can you share which screen saver you're seeing this with? And which OS?

 

[FoxyKaye]

Thanks, I'll look into that. Can you share which screen saver you're seeing this with? And which OS?

This happened on both Flying Toasters 3.0 and Starry Skyline 1.0 running on Sequoia 15.7.9

 

[FoxyKaye]

@Jeff Halter - After another day of observation, there's a nuance: the screensaver is freezing on any *external* monitor, but not the main laptop screen.

 

[Jeff Halter]

@Jeff Halter - After another day of observation, there's a nuance: the screensaver is freezing on any *external* monitor, but not the main laptop screen.

Thanks, I haven't been able to reproduce this but I recognize that there are limitations and potential problems with the current multi-display approach. I'm kicking around some ideas on how to re-design this so that each display can either run a fully independent emulator process, or one process that can span the animation across multiple displays. The latter approach is how the original software worked and looks really cool for some modules (e.g. a flying toaster crosses one monitor to the next).

I'll share an update when I can.

 

[turbineseaplane]

I've switched to Final Frontier (starfield) and I bloody LOVE IT on my huge OLED!