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I do...and I miss them greatly.      I still, to this day, find staring at Starry Night relaxing. I smile when I see Bad Dog. I have fond memories of going through the After Dark program itself and messing with settings and watching all of the great modules in action. This was the screensaver program back in the day of CRT monitors. Since the latest version (V4.0) came out in like 1998 (which can be downloaded via abandonware means), you can forget about installing it on 64-bit OSes. The farthest I was able to get was to install V4.0 on a Windows 7 32-bit machine using Win98 compatibility mode. After running the program though, After Dark tries to open its tab in display properties where it used to be displayed before getting confused and abruptly ending. Going the normal way through the screen savers list shows an option named "Unable to load selected module: %s", which can run some of the modules by modifying one of the registry settings, but it's just not the same.  I wonder if an updated version of this great collection exists somewhere so it can be run in all it's glory on new 64-bit Windows 7 / Windows 8 systems. I'd imagine the program and launcher would have to be completely rewritten to work this way, but it's something I would gladly pay a few bucks for.
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Jul 10, 2014 04:22
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Looks like someone has implemented a few of them using HTML5. The animations seem to run a little fast though. Load one up and press F11. Warp is there! Re-implementing After Dark screen savers looks like a pretty fun project for anyone wanting to play around.
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Jul 10, 2014 06:03
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I do. I'm pretty sure I remember one of them having the option to play WAV files through the PC speaker, which was literally the only way I could listen to WAV files before I had enough scratch to buy a sound card. This is funny, because I just hooked up my old Seagate 245.36MB hard drive (ST3283A), and 21 years on, it works fine. I worked out that compared to a 32GB microSD card, you'd need to spend 5600 times as much cash on those old drives from 1993 to get the same storage. Ah, the wonders.
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Jul 10, 2014 10:06
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I remember them being the only interesting thing on my old Mac PowerPC along with Spin Doctor Challenger and that VR Tanks game. And that stupid dog.
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Jul 10, 2014 20:58
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Maybe try suggesting it on Steam? I see software on there and it looks like they're willing to work with the developers to get old software working on newer systems.
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Jul 10, 2014 22:16
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Wow I haven't thought about After Dark in a long time. Brings back some fond memories!
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Jul 11, 2014 02:33
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TWBalls posted:Maybe try suggesting it on Steam? I see software on there and it looks like they're willing to work with the developers to get old software working on newer systems. Steam does a terrible job of porting old software to new systems. In several cases that I've purchased, I suspect they didn't do anything at all.
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Jul 11, 2014 04:09
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Sauer posted:Looks like someone has implemented a few of them using HTML5. The animations seem to run a little fast though. Load one up and press F11. Warp is there! Re-implementing After Dark screen savers looks like a pretty fun project for anyone wanting to play around. This is great! Warp, the "Out to Lunch" marquee and the Berkley Systems logo bring back good memories. Good to see I'm not the only one having a nostalgia trip over a screensaver collection. I keep having an interest that pops up every couple years to assemble an old-school Windows 95 era PC just for things like this and I should just go ahead and do it when we eventually find a bigger place.
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Jul 11, 2014 09:05
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We had After Dark screensavers back then on our Mac. I did some Google searching, and I found ToasterClone. If you have a Mac with OS X, there's this, too.
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Jul 11, 2014 14:10
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Sauer posted:Warp is there! Re-implementing After Dark screen savers looks like a pretty fun project for anyone wanting to play around. While Version 4.0 and above does work, sadly none of the classic modules are compatible. While it doesn't integrate within your screen-saver settings like it used to, you were able to run the ADTRAY.exe file and it would kick in when required. Most modules would work, but you'd often had to set the program to run in 256 color mode for some. The rather fantastic thing is most screensavers were set to dynamically tile based on your screen resolution, so even if you're running at 1920x1980 - stuff scales perfectly. However the problem nowadays is that Windows 7 and 8 has turned off 16bit parsing. If you have the 32bit version installed, you can force it back on and you're fine. You're stuffed if it's 64. I suspect you could run it in a VM machine in an overlay mode. BogDew fucked around with this message at 15:04 on Jul 11, 2014 |
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Jul 11, 2014 15:01
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Starry Night was and still is one of my favorite computer-related things. Someone actually redid it and it's on my home TV-connected gaming/GP desktop. It's wonderful to watch sometimes. https://code.google.com/p/starrynight/
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Jul 11, 2014 15:28
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I remember Elvises on flying toilets, and laughing my head off when I discovered Karaoke Mode for Ride of the Valkyries. 'Bum bum bum bum BUM BUM...'
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Jul 11, 2014 22:28
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I definitely do. I'd sure love to play Lunatic Fringe again on a modern Mac.
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Jul 12, 2014 00:18
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It seems it is possible to run After Dark 3.2 via an XP VM and setting it to unity mode will enable it to function...somewhat. Dual monitors won't work and the speed of some screensavers skyrockets.
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Jul 12, 2014 05:53
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I did some beta testing for Berkeley Systems, back when that meant they had to mail the builds to you. I tested some of the Mac versions of After Dark, and later the early You Don't Know Jack games. Also a weird collection of mini-games based on After Dark modules -- I remember there being a Bad Dog game. Flying out of the sun The smell of toast is in the air When there's a job to be done The Flying Toasters will be there! And it's flap! Flap! Flap! Now help is on the way A victory song they sing We pop up to save the day On flying toaster wings! cowtown fucked around with this message at 07:18 on Jul 12, 2014 |
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Jul 12, 2014 07:15
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cowtown posted:I did some beta testing for Berkeley Systems.
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Jul 12, 2014 07:22
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ToasterClone
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Jul 13, 2014 17:14
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MJP posted:Starry Night was and still is one of my favorite computer-related things. This is great, thanks I have an old iMac g4 (the weird lamp shaped one) in the basement whose sole purpose in life is to cycle through all the After Dark screensavers that work with OS9.2 whenever I need a nostalgia trip. Annoyingly, After Dark for the mac used lots of compressed resources and the use of resource compression was deprecated for some reason in OS9. Fortunately someone figured out how to strip the compression and make AD work with OS9, you can get all the installers on http://macintoshgarden.org/ if you have an old mac. While trying to search for information about how to decompress resources I stumbled across http://www.os923.com/ which is amazing, especially http://www.os923.com/AlgWaaromNietOSX.htm
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Jul 13, 2014 21:38
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MJP posted:Starry Night was and still is one of my favorite computer-related things. Again, I wish all of the screensavers would be recreated this way to work via modern means, but if I had to pick one of them, it would be good 'ol Starry Night. Thank you for this!
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Jul 13, 2014 21:58
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Sweet sweet nostalgia. Speaking of classic screensavers, did anyone have Johnny Castaway? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVgGfKY91Lg
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Jul 23, 2014 16:28
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HalloKitty posted:I do. I'm pretty sure I remember one of them having the option to play WAV files through the PC speaker, which was literally the only way I could listen to WAV files before I had enough scratch to buy a sound card. I remember finding a sound card driver for win3.1 that piped audio to the PC speaker. It actually worked really well if you didn't have a Sound Blaster. Memories. My first sound card was a Microchannel Sound Blaster original. It was badass at the time.
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Jul 23, 2014 17:17
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After Dark was super cool
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Jul 25, 2014 22:45
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revmoo posted:I remember finding a sound card driver for win3.1 that piped audio to the PC speaker. It actually worked really well if you didn't have a Sound Blaster. I remember that driver too. It ate the CPU though any time sound was playing. I made the mistake of turning on sound in SimCity once, took me 25 minutes of slowly working the mouse to the right places to turn that back off. 25MHz of 486SX was just not enough to play audio apparently.
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Jul 27, 2014 22:48
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I remember one called Screaming Bjarne. It would blank the screen for a random amount of time and then a guy would appear with a loud scream. Still available here
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Jul 28, 2014 13:27
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