Afterglow: Run classic After Dark screen savers on modern macOS

1 day ago (morphing.cloud)

The original After Dark, distributed on floppy in 1989, 1.1MB, was $110 in today's money. More than $7 per screen saver!

Of course, the target market of computer users was way smaller than it is today.

I need the Star Trek modules, which I recall waiting overnight to pirate from a BBS on my 14.4k. "Do NOT pick up the phone, mom."

Also Lunatic Fringe - somehow and for some reason a full top down space shoot-em-up in After Dark. Probably for office workers to play, I do recall there was a "boss mode" that pulled up a fake spreadsheet or something.

I need this for Windows.

The After Dark screensavers are on the internet archive, but obviously they look and run like crap since they're made for Windows 3.x to maybe 95/98.

Semi-related, I redid just the other day the Flying Toasters in-browser with the full logic from the original, toast-juggler and everything.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49432857

Thought about doing it as a Linux screensaver, but I didn't have the patience to actually wait for the idle time, and that way I can share it with my non-Linux-using family.

I need this for Wayland. Maybe when the maintainers discover that joy in computing both exists and can be a worthwhile pursuit.

I get the nostalgia factor, but is it actually a good idea to use screensavers on modern monitors rather than letting them sleep?

  • Leaving it on all the time would probably dim the backlight eventually more than turning it off, but I’m sure the monitor could handle it. Mostly a waste of energy.

"You can also browse and install software releases directly from the Internet Archive without leaving the app. "

That's a fine line being walked there. If they are worried about rights issues and not including the bundles, this seems like a risky FU by building this feature in directly. The part about using bundles you may have without asking questions of origin is fine. Otherwise, why not just include the bundles?

  • From a pragmatic perspective: Berkeley Systems went through a long chain of acquisitions in the late 90s/early 2000s and eventually ended up under Vivendi, which hasn't done anything significant with the rights since a Flying Toasters themed J2ME game [1] in 2006. I doubt very much that they're going to do anything.

    [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESZSufoTPBs

  • This is pretty well trod legally. By the user taking a specific action, it makes the user responsible. Comma.ai uses the same technique. Technically their self driving hardware comes with no software. You have to click a button and point it at their GitHub to get the software on it, but it's automatic after that.

I’m surprised still that there hasn’t been a port of the classic old old Windows screensavers.

  • They're not as satisfying on today's high resolution displays unless you wanted to also redraw the artwork.

Has anyone been able to make this actually work as a macOS screensaver? I'm using Tahoe and when I go to System Settings -> Wallpapers -> Screensavers, I don't see any option to select like Afterglow or any of the wallpapers I installed.

Anyone get this running? I installed and downloaded content but cannot figure out how to get it to appear under Screen Savers in System Settings.

I wish someone would do this for a recently deceased OS X screen saver I loved.

Someone went through the film 2001: A Space Odyssey and re-created all of the computer screens, with animation.

It was a masterpiece of mid-century design and space-age optimism.

IIRC, the author got a cease-and-desist demand, and was left to languish and die when Macs went 64-bit only.

  • "HAL 9000". This blog has how to do it on modern machines: https://www.fluffytech.co.uk/fluff/the-hal-project/#top

    general idea, rip the 4k vids from YT and use a video screensaver app

    • Took a look to links from your link to get to the 4K YT. At first I wasn't that impressed until I realized it was defaulting to 480p. The 2160 stream looks amazing. Sadly, being it's a YT stream, that might be the cleanest I've seen clips from that movie. Color me impressed as I go off to find the full movie like that.