** SereneScreen Marine Aquarium 2.01 !! **
 

I love the wide screen version even on one monitor; it really adds depth and dimension. Look like I ought to be able to have at least two more fish in there. I want to buy the Time version, will it also have the new fish and the widescreen format?

Yes and no.

I'm not much of a techno, so all I can say is WOW...the redone fish are amazing...with the multimonitor spanning it is so cool to watch the fish swim from one to another...and the biggest wow came when we threw the widescreen version up on the flat screen telly in the reception room...people actually clapped..lol...I don't know what all is different technically, but it's all first class to me...thnx to everybody who worked so hard on it.

Nice! Very, very nice! Much as I love the GA, my loyalties are swaying back to MA2. When the fully 3D version comes out I have a feeling there will be no contest. Now I just need to set up 3 machines with a monitor each in order to watch GA, MA2 and to prepare for FA. Wheeee...! :D

:TU: Excellent work to all those that worked on this. :TU:

Haven't been using any SS lately ( shame on me )

This will get me using MA2 again. :)


Thanks !!

The fish are better than expected.
1.The blue ring angelfish is awesome and you can easily see where his eyes are now,plus to see the eyes move and look at you is so cool.

2.The Queen Angelfish looks more realistic.Still one of my favorite.

3.The rock beauty angelfish is now one of my favorite.

4.The squarespot anthias before I liked having the new color in the aquarium,but now it has more details to it and looks more realistic.

5.The Emperor Angelfish looks better and the stripes and fins look better.

6.The Redfin Butterflyfish before kinda looked like a blur,now you can see the unique details the fish have.Very nice.
You did a awesome job Jim.

On selecting which fish to put into the aquarium,it lets me.But when the screensaver comes back on it automatically keeps random picking two fish.I don't have random choices selected on.But it keeps acting like it does.Is it suppose to do this?

Nope, what are your system specs, and are you clicking ok after selecting your fish?

yes,i agree with greenhsif...
i have posted this in the ma 2.0 fish comment thread...
i have found out that ma2 and ma2 md shares the same registry key..i think that's the problem..

Yeah,I have clicked ok after choosing the fish.I did it again to make sure.

Processor Speed-How do i found out my speed?
Ram- 96.0mb
Hard Drive Space available-7.58GB

Also if I select the same kinda fish for all the selections,it doesn't automatically choose any fish for me.I even tried to choose just two fish and the second one ends up becoming a random choice automaitically.Its weird.
Do i need a new keycode,its kinda acting like a demo.

NICE!!!! THANK YOU! :)

Very nice.. having all the versions in one means I can do some major deleting now of previous copies.

But.. can some one explain "anamorphic". Using the wide screen mode with a "normal" aspect monitor it stretches the screen vertically to fill the available space (and removes the black bars) when set from .8 to 1.0 . I suppose the fish are stretched in the process.. why the two places to change it? what is the difference?
Just curious, no big deal..:D

I found there's a Fish8 entry in the registry, but there are only 7 fish in the tank no matter how I try to tweak it, what's the purpose of this Fish8 entry anyway?

The N key still work, however, the difference doesn't seem to obvious, the only difference I can see is when the moment of pressing the N key, 0.5 second later, the fish looks same, although the registry CalcNormals remains 01

The wide screen feature is cool!!! but I'm not very sure about the purpose of anamorphic factor, it only changes the width of the tank, what else does it do?

And the sunny is right, MA2 MD shares the same regitry of MA2, I think that causes the problem

the fish8 key is for wide mode in ma2 md version

Arrrr...why didn't I notice that? stupid me....Thank you sunny!!!

I dind't count the fish but so concentrate on looking the difference when repeatly pressing the N key.... :P

I guess the anamorphic factor is used to adjust the hight and width for different monitor....to match the best fit....

I wish there's a hot key for tuning the anamorphic factor so I don't have to keep pressing the space bar and going back and forth to the setting to see the result.

i think ralph means why there's 2 checkboxes for anamorphic...?
1 anamorphic factor is for the normal fullscreen mode just like in LD or DVD..
the 2 anamorphic factor is for the desktop...actually i still can't figured this function out..

I have to say thank you Jim for your beautiful artwork that you have perfected.

The Redfin Butterflyfish is now my favorite. I think you really did an excellent job on that one. The dark red color on the bottom of the fin contrasts perfectly with the rest of its body. And the fins move so realistically this time compared to the other models. I liked the way the squarespot looked before, even though it wasn't realistic, but I have to say the new one has pretty colored fins. Maybe you can put the old squarespot back so there would be two different looking ones in there although I do know that is one of the reasons you wanted to go back and fix all of them up in the first place.

I really am impressed by how you've made the fish visible on top of the black when it goes dark. And I love the widescreen version coming up automatically.


By the way Jim, just out of curiosity. Did you make any last minute enhancements to the other fish at all in this version?

And James, I think I heard the cast from the Lord of the Rings thanking you at the Academy Awards the other night. :)

huh? automatically? how's that?

do u mean the fin movement of the Redfin Butterflyfish is better than other fish or do you mean all fish's fin movement improves?

oops....looks my secret was out!!! Eddie, can you keep it down as much as possible :D, you know....I hate medias rush into my home :rolleyes:

James - there's really no reason to touch the Anamorphic Factor setting. Just leave it at .8. It will automatically adjust the widescreen to display at the proper aspect ratio for any resolution, assuming that your monitor has been adjusted so that the non-widescreen version fills the screen at that resolution.

Thank you Jim, and yes, it automatically set to .8 for me, but when I use it on my normal LCD monitor, it automatically set to 1, and if there's really no need to adjust this factor, than what's the purpose of putting that in the setting? or is it still become handy when some monitor is not "adjusted"? and what exactly do you mean the monitor has been "adjusted"? by what?

Thanks again!

To adjust your monitor, simply bring up the NON-widescreen version, select a resolution, and adjust the monitor so that the picture fills the screen. The when you switch to the widescreen version, the program should letterbox the picture into the proper aspect ratio. This needs to be done separately for any resolution you plan to use.

This assumes that you are using a 4:3 monitor. The Anamorphic Factor is really there for all the other weird types of display devices which people will try to use. Maybe they have a Plasma display and already have the controls set properly for the TV signal they usually watch. Instead of messing up those settings, they could use the Anamorphic Factor to adjust the Aquarium image.

Thank you again Jim, I'm now crystal clear

What is the Start Window Mode setting For?

If you want the program to start up in a window instead of in full-screen mode. It's so those who want a window in the background won't have to press [F] after starting it.

/Tiny Shortcut

The new Rock Beauty is definatly one of my favourites now. Cute big eyes.
Thank you Jim for this amazing piece of art!
Also the new (old) Queen Angel is a great addition.

The only problem I had was getting it on a floppy. What happened? ;)

ok..I am using dual monitors, are the two suppose to show the exact same thing on both (cloned pictures), or is it suppose to be one and the fish swim back and forth between the two... if the latter, how can I get it to do this, also when I go to windowed mode and try and stretch it between the two monitors, my secondary monitor freezes whatever is displayed, for example if I set the window, and darg it so it is shown partly on one monitor and the other, one side the fish are moving, the other size the aquarium is frozen. if I drag the whole thing to the frozen side, it all freezes, if I drag it to the other side it resumes movement...

I don't think Windowed mode will ever be able to stretch across 2 monitors.

Also I had not heard from Prolific that dual monitor gets you fish "swimming from 1 monitor to the other". If it does this is very interesting!

well... with the 2.0 version, I could set the window to play on both with it stretched between the two...now with 2.01...not.

also..I stll have 2.0 installed, with 2.01.. if I run 2.0 and then close it and open 2.01.. it takes on 2.0's control panel and wide screen is not available.. and then spanning the 2 monitors work...if I reboot and do not run 2.0, I have wide screen option and then the spanning freezes on the 2nd monitor.

Like I said, I'm not technically savvy so I'm just winging it, but the way I got it to span the monitors is...I have two 17"lcd's, 4:3 ratio, hung side by side on the wall, however one of them is a monitor that also built-in tv, so I could span them by using the analog+tv mode. Half the widescreen aquarium is on one monitor, the other half is on the other. By adjusting the resolution and tweaking the anamorphic factor, I could get a decent view, altho a bit off the top/bottom is cut off. In this fashion, the fish swim from monitor to monitor as they cross the aquarium. We also used the anamorphic factor when throwing the widescreen aquarium up on the plasma. Depending on the look we wanted, we could set the resolution high to focus on a certain part of the aqurium and have the fish really big, or we could set it to a resolution so that there were no black bars on the top and bottom of the plasma and then tweak the anamorphic factor so we didn't lose much the height of the aquarium ( we centered it so that we just lost a bit of the sand). However we do lose about an inch on each side of the aquarium. This was a happy medium for us, since our objective was to showcase the fish.

Now that I've thougth about it for a sec...technically, we're not using dual monitor mode to see the fish swim from monitor to monitor, since it is fed to the second 17" lcd via s-video. So I'll remove myself from this discussion.

Yeah, it no longer fits on a 3.5 floppy. :(

3.5 floppy....they still make those? havn't use one in over a year. LOL

Crashes for me...
 

Minor word of warning. I found it killed my Win2k system with a kmode exception not handled error (2 out of 2 times). MA2.0 still works fine. So I'd suggest saving anything you want saved before giving it its first try...
John

ok here is the problem at least form me as well.. with allthe other screen savers... I can put them into windowed mode and drag the window to the 2nd monitor and make the window big enough to fill the screen and work on the first monitor, now with 2.01 if I drag the window to the second monitor all freezes, and if I minimize, and restore it come up black... I have messed with all the control panel settings for monitor 2 and nothing seems to help. I hate to keep beating this horse, I just wanted to make my point as clear as possible... :)

Pat - that's right, with the installer and the entire widescreen background included, the program no longer fits on a floppy.

Bugsy,
Earlier, it ws an outspoken goal of Jim's that the SS should fit on one floppy. A little protest against all the bloatware out there...

/Tiny Downloading Time

yeah i know, I was just poking a little fun :)