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| The link now works |
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By yappi - Posted on November 15, 2004 - 10:12:31 (#14751)
Current version when comment was posted: 1.1 |
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It was due to a redirection filter of altervista, so when BeBits redirect the url to download a file from altervista, altervista block this and redirect to the altervista home page.
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| Many thanks Fatrat |
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By yappi - Posted on August 21, 2003 - 10:41:26 (#8572)
Current version when comment was posted: 1.0 Beta |
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Thank you for the suggestions, i have improved the screensaver with these options. Your source code has been very very usefull, future comments are always welcomed.
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| A few more suggestions... |
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By fatrat - Posted on August 3, 2003 - 11:47:52 (#8416)
Current version when comment was posted: 1.0 Beta |
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Hi,
Just a few more quick suggestions for improving this screensaver:
- You can avoid doing the erase step when drawing your lines alltogether if you make the last line to be drawn black -- it'll erase the last line as it goes, and the others will just be over-written with the new color; try commenting out your call to DrawLines(view, true) in Draw(), and you'll see what I mean. It'll leave a slightly visible trail, but everything else looks ok and there's almost no flicker. You can finish this by making the color value of the last line drawn equal to 0,0,0 (you'll have to put something outside your current initialization loop for the colors to do the last one as all 0's.) Making this change eliminates the flickering some people are seeing alltogether, and also cuts the amount of drawing done in half. You might be able to remove the call to BScreen's WaitForRetrace() once this is done, too -- you'll have to try it.
- Try drawing back-to-front instead of front-to-back; this way the lighest shades of blue, which should be "in front" of the darker ones, are drawn on top. It looks a little more realistic, somehow. So, just change your drawing loop to go from the last line down to the first (zero), it's a quick change.
Ok, I'll be quiet now :)
-Fatrat
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| Good starter screensaver :) |
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By fatrat - Posted on August 3, 2003 - 11:13:08 (#8415)
Current version when comment was posted: 1.0 Beta |
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Hi,
This is a good starter screensaver, and it's great that you have included the source code, so that other people can learn how to write their own screensavers :) There's a few suggestions I would like to make that would improve this overall, from my own experience writing BeOS screensavers:
- When you use BScreen's WaitForRetrace() call, you are blocking the screensaver thread until the retrace starts (usually 60Hz, or ~16ms); this interferes with the "TickSize" you may have set for the screensaver to delay drawing between frames, and doesn't necessarily stop flicker (I still see flicker on my system here.) I've been guilty of doing this in my screensavers too, it wasn't until later that I realized that it could cause some weird timing problems. I would suggest making a checkbox on the configuration screen to turn WaitForRetrace() on/off.
- You go through a lot of trouble to save out the configuration for the screensaver to a file, but BScreensaver has a mechanism to archive a BMessage between invocations for you, so it's much easier to handle this; see my screensaver "Sparticles", http://www.bebits.com/app/3049 , for some example code of how to use the BMessage passed into the screensaver on startup to save configuration data (the consturctor and the "SaveState()" functions are the ones you should be looking at first.) I think you'll find that you can eliminate 90% of the code you have in there now to store that one state variable, since BMessage can be told to store a bool.
- When you package up the screensaver, don't include the actual object file -- (Objects.BeWake)/BeWake.o -- in the .zip file, or any other intermediary files. It just makes the .zip file bigger, and doesn't really help out the end user.
- Use a .rsrc file to set the screensaver's binary with an icon other than the default BeOS binary one; again, see my Sparticles screensaver (above) and just modify that one -- if you double click on the .rsrc file, it'll bring up FileTypes and all that good stuff so you can set the description for your binary. Finally, include the .rsrc in your project file (in BeIDE, it's Project->Add Files, just like if you were adding source or libraries to the project.) This is a small bit of polish, but it makes a difference :)
Again, good work, I look forward to seeing more neat BeOS software from you in the future! :)
-Fatrat
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