recreating After Dark

[ChristTrekker]

I loved my Star Trek AD collection. It was the first software I purchased (not including Word/Excel which came bundled with my first Mac in college). I keep thinking that it's too bad it's not possible to run those great screensavers on my Mac these days.

But is it really so impossible? What if one were to extract the resources from one's original legally purchased copy, and wrote one's own screensaver module to make use of them? You couldn't distribute the resources, of course, but you should be able to distribute the code and the directions for others to extract their AD resources similarly. Right?

I've not looked into this at all (yes, despite floating this idea around as far back as 2008) and it's totally possible that the graphic/sound resources were masked in some way to make this impractical.

[bbraun]

Screen savers seem obsolete and their inclusion in modern systems seems like an anachronism to me. However, some screen savers did more than just prevent CRT burn-in during pre-energy saving times, and as such deserve modern enablers: http://www.sealiesoftware.com/fringe/

[ChristTrekker]

I completely agree that one does not need screen-blanking software these days, at least for the original purposes of saving energy and/or preventing deterioration of the screen. But as far as a security measure and/or being a fun diversion they are still relevant.

[bbraun]

Most systems that support screen blanking these days have a "password-on-wake" feature AFAIK, which should leave no practical use for screen savers in the modern era. However, none of us are here for practicality, and on that note, on to the discussion of old AD modules on modern systems!
That link above was intended to demonstrate that it is possible to take AD screen saver modules and run them in a modern wrapper. That one is Lunatic Fringe specific but demonstrates it is entirely doable, and the AD module interface is reasonably well documented and the SDK complete with examples is available.

[Scott Baret]

The only thing a screen saver is still good for is the entertainment factor. Slide shows of photos are always nice if you've got a big monitor on display. The After Dark nostalgia factor would be worth it. It's a shame the creators of the original screen saver don't modernize it (I know they're still around; they were interviewed on LEM a few years back). The Fringe Player application is a step in the right direction. I'm not sure if the guy who wrote it was affiliated with After Dark or not, but if they could do it for one module, there's no reason it can't be done for the entire set.

Speaking of special collections, does anyone else out there have the Disney collection? It's a hard drive hog but is, by far, my personal favorite, especially with the quality of the graphics and sound. It came out around 1994, so don't go expecting Finding Nemo or Tangled, but it does have pretty much everything up through Beauty and the Beast (which is perhaps my favorite module--stained glass windows featuring movie scenes are drawn on the screen). The Disney collection also had some of the coolest box art of any Mac program (classic Mickey on a green backdrop) and distinct green labels on the floppies.

[BlastoiseBlue]

I'm not sure how important it would be to get it, but I do have the iconic 90's "Flying toasters" by AD on my Classic. If I can get an ADB mouse I could see about backing it up to a floppy and uploading it in a zip folder. :3

[phreakout]

My favorite was AD version 4.x. It included a Gary Larsen's "The Far Side" as an option in the settings. One I remember had a hen coop, a chicken looked around to see that the coast was clear, then yelled out, "EGG FIGHT!!!" Next thing you know, all these hens are literally throwing eggs at each other.

73s de Phreakout.

[LCGuy]

Darkside of the Mac was shareware, and from memory I think it even supported some After Dark modules.

[Dennis Nedry]

Underware was my FAVORITE screen saver program and it supported AD modules too. I'm not sure why they named it that other than just to be silly. There was even a module that had Bill Gates stuck inside your screen that bounced around and periodically slammed into the glass.

[krye]

Agreed, it's been a good 4 years since I ran a screen saver. I just have my monitor go to sleep after 15 minutes. As far as my classic macs, I just turn the brightness down to nothing when I walk away. Or set to go to sleep after 5 minutes on the ones that have the feature. Usually screen savers on a Mac with 4 M of RAM is just a resource hog. My SE became useless after I installed Pyro! on it running with the 2 other extensions that loaded at startup. I didn't even have enough left of my 4MBs to open Disk Copy.