Topic: DeskToy is a screen saver for Mac OS X 10.3 to 10.5

[Software Santa]

DeskToy is a screen saver for Mac OS X 10.3 to 10.5

DeskToy is a screen saver for Mac OS X. It renders an animated scene of a common perpetual motion desk toy: a collection of concentric circular pendula linked together.

There are lots of ways to configure the view: you can change the number of rings, put the camera in the center, speed up or slow down the frame rate. You can also enable damping to watch the pendula gradually become still in the horrible way of all things in the fullness of time. Do so only at the risk of profound existential despair.

Hosting for DeskToy is graciously provided by SourceForge.


Supported Platforms

DeskToy is currently only available for OS X. Release 1.0 is the current stable version. Here is a summary of known platform compatibility by release:

Release         OS X                  Intel      PowerPC
1.0             10.4.11 (Tiger)           Yes       Yes
                 10.5.2 (Leopard)   Yes(1)   Unknown
            10.3.X (Panther)   N/A      No
            10.6.x (Snow Leopard)   No            No

   Known Issues
1   On Leopard installs, screen saver shows up in system preferences as "PMSaver" and not as "DeskToy", but otherwise works fine. This will be fixed in a future release.


If you successfully install and use DeskToy on a configuration that is not explicitly mentioned here, please let me know by sending an email to spormp at gmail dot com. Similarly, if you experience problems using DeskToy on a system, please let me know.


Download and Installation

Follow the download instructions on the Project Download Page.
User Guide

It's a screen saver! You use it by doing nothing for a certain amount of time. Explore the behavior of the program by opening

             Tiger:   Finder > Applications > System Preferences > Desktop & Screen Savers > DeskToy > Options
             
             Leopard: Finder > Applications > System Preferences > Desktop & Screen Savers > PMSaver > Options
             

and just mousing around on the resulting property sheet. Things to try from here:

    * Position the camera in the center. Check the 'Interior Camera' checkbox on the 'View Settings' tab.
    * Render the scene as a wireframe. Uncheck the 'Filled Polygons' checkbox on the 'View Settings' tab. Decreasing the detail level, disabling shadows and antialiasing will make the wireframe view more lucid.
    * Render in slow motion. On 'Model Settings', uncheck 'Real Time' and slide the 'Speed' scale down to a really small value.
    * Improve performance on slower machines. If you get a really poor frame rate (animation looks choppy), you can change a lot of settings that might help:
         1. Uncheck 'Antialiasing' and/or 'Drop Shadows' in 'View Settings'
         2. Slide the 'Detail' slider to a lower value in 'View Settings', like 15.
         3. Decrease the number of rings in 'Model Settings'.
         4. Increase the 'Precision' slider in 'Model Settings' (do this in small increments for best results!).

Contributions and Feedback

If you have a patch or would like to submit some neighborly feedback, you can do so on the Open Discussion Forum. You can also email me directly: spormp at gmail dot com. Allow a couple of days for response.

You can obtain a source tarball of DeskToy from the SourceForge downloads page. XCode is the primary environment used for editing and building project sources. The source tarball includes the XCode project file. You will need to have installed the OS X Developer Tools in order to perform most activities.

The latest sources are also available via anonymous CVS. See the section Anonymous CVS on the CVS Page for access.

Disclaimer

Please read the license agreement bundled with the download. It will tell you that DeskToy, like all software, is good for nothing. God help you if you use it.

© Copyright 2008 Jason Trump. All rights reserved.

http://desktoy.sourceforge.net/