Start Predefined Aquarium?
 

Hi,

I am not a programer...
I used to play with Aquazone, another Virtual Reality program wich give the posibility to create more own aquariums but allow only one session of programm to run at once...
I know that my english is bad, but I wish that somebody could implement this simple funktion to start one from a list of more predefined aquariums. Probably would Jim implement in the future Version of saltwateraquarium, something little and very easy to configurate in the Traylist...
I hope I don't angry Jim. When that what I made is unalowed, I bag the admin to delete this entry and scuse me.
I'd like to see what another users said about this (when the admin not delete it).
To start the utility unzip the files and put them in an directory and start the exe. To start your own prefered aquariums edit the ini-file...


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Hehe! I think I was first to download this.

Crazy or not, I installed it! (hoping it wasn't a virus) :)

I think the idea to have predefined aquarium settings is quite nice. Specially when more and more fishes and creatures will be available.

It's a fast way to change the population of the aquarium.

BUT, the window leaves a lot o traces if you move it around... Other than that it's a good start!

Until it's banned from this forum, I can recomend a try at least. :)

If it's against the rules I don't know, but without "borderbenders" we all would still be monkeys in a tree or something... :D

(I think memilms humble aproach should lead us to treat him with respect at least, or what do you think Jim, Feldon23 and all others...?!)

Whoa thats actually cool program!

I belive some people wanted this feature to b implemented in future versions of Aquarium.

Do you think its possible to make predefined background and foreground lights go with each setup?

I only change the fish in the registry and make no chandes to another settings. The program is only to start something and is made with installation software and it is only to try something and exit; anotherway hold the whole system and give not the cpu-power free.

I don't THINK there is anything wrong with something that does various Registry profiles. We'll have to wait and see Jim's opinion on it.

I haven't downloaded and tested it yet.

Here a new one.
 

Hi,

here are another files that support settings for back-foreground-autolights and starfish. The setting for the last started aquarium will be remain for the next one when the other not change from ini again.



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If this thread is still going 3 weeks from now, I'll take a shot at making something graphical.

A little bit more settings
 

I hate that I cannot write programs, it would be so nice to have something small in trayicon to start and configure the screensaver...
I'm not pleased with the "look and feel" from my "tool" but that's what I can do...
Hey, is there nobody to make it better ???

Looks like you managed to write a program to me.

Like I said, if this doesn't get the death knell from Jim, I'll do a graphical version.

Well, I gave this a shot and it seems to be working fine. You can click on a fish pic and then add it to one of the slots with the numbered buttons. No fancy drag 'n drop but very simple to use. Custom settings can be saved as required. Let me know what you think.
And if anyone is wondering, the delete and cancel buttons are not functional yet. Personally I hate programs that don't clean up after themselves, but for now you'll just have to run the included reg-file to uninstall all traces of this program from the registry.

Hey! Nice work! :)

It's a bit confusing to use though. Maybe it's because of this two-click selection style, (first select fish, and then slot) but I see that it's not easy to reduse this to only one click... After a few tries you get used to it, but I think a program needs to be close to foolproof to gain total aprechiation on the market. :)

One other small request: a button to start the serenescreen from your program also?

I added a picture of your program running, so everybody here can see what we talk about. :)

Hey that's a nice one :)
with all the fish pic included the user gains more info about what fish is actually been selected.

and Swed's suggestion about adding a button for launching the SSA is a good one.
and here's another suggestion: what about adding a starfish position selector with on/off glass option? so the user could define the position of start fish with instant effect.
these two setting also linked to the two registry values,
there's no need to define every pixel postion of starfish but with few predefined fixed postion is enough. Just apply the binary value into the "StarFishPos" in registry. and "StarfishOnGlass" for instant effect to let the starfish claw on the glass

This is a very good tweaking tool for SSA
maybe u can include other special settings such as "NoCompressedTextures" and "Blankspace" for advance user

Ok, here is a new version. It now cleans up its own registry key once you delete your last custom setting. The undo button restores the settings found on startup, even if you already applied changes. And yes... there is now a button to launch the aquarium!
As for the starfish, I agree that it would be neat to force it to the glass without having to wait for the right conditions, but I will have to do some experimenting with those binary keys first. We wouldn't want to recreate the floating/disappearing starfish bug again, now would we?



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Swede, it looks like you've caught some of that lose-the-last-letter-disease that have been concentrating on Jim...

/Tin Turtl

Mountainmaster, your picker is Brilliant !!!

Nice to see a good program
 

Hi,

the program look great, fine work...
It would be nice to have a list with all saved "setting-files"(replacement for dropdown-list) and a posibility to change the position (up-down) of the "setting-file".
I miss the 2 Starfish options (StarfishAllowedGlass;StarfishOnGlass), the second-one can not be setted from screensaver options.
The "start screensaver" button is OK but when the screensaver ist started you can see no changes, please end the saver and start it again by click on this button.
An tray icon option as button (and commandline option to start it directly in trayicon) and an "exit"-button will be also great.

***
off topic

Hm... I have been looking, but I only found one s missing...
Was it "need" ="needs"? Was it only that? Hm... I must be something more, but I have no more time to sit and stare at the last post. I'm in the middle of a session of Dungeon Siege here in Karlskrona, so I leave it for the world to ponder upon. :)

Sometimes I am a bit dyslxeic... hehe dyslexic and loose the ending of words, or scramble the letters up. Maybe too little blood in my alcohol. :) (just kidding)

***

[offtopic]
Guess I was a bit unclear there. I meant that just as Jim sometimes is referred to as "Sach", James wrote "Swed's" in a post. This was no big issue. I wasn't looking to pick on people's spelling, just trying to make a quick joke...
[/offtopic]

/Tin Turtl

P.S.
If (i.e. when) I make grammatical or orthographical errors, please tell me about it. I'd rather learn than repeat my mistakes.

* WISHLIST for the fish picker program *

Ok, as it's such a nice program, maybe we can start a wishlist too :)

My first wishes are:

- Display the name of the fish under each pic
- Maybe find some nice pics of those fish, information and maybe some facts (like feldon's fish guide) and with a nice [?] button you could click that, then a fish icon, and popup a window and show the rendered fish, the real fish pic(s) and the info about it.
- An option to open the aquarium in window mode "docked" below the program screen and, if there's any way to do it, select a new setup and refresh the aquarium on the fly to check what your setup will look like.

Ok, ok, maybe I'm asking for too many things, but after that, it's a wishlist ;)

Mountainmaster
very nice, it looks ur programe going better and better
and I agree the starfish thing, in fact I've treid to alter the binary values of starfishpos long tim e ago and found it is interesting to see u force the starfish anywayeher u want, even sometimes u make it disappers, yes, for some ppl who don't like the starfish,they like the previours buggy version, I remeber someone said this b4 "with this buggy version, there no simple way to get rid of starfish!"(was it u Tiny?or someone else?)
I beleive u have to do some experiment to recored down some binary value of starfish's position,taugh job man! but I wish u all the best.

I beleive a user-friendly graphical user interface is not really easy to design, as u have to suit many ppl's tastes, GUI thing are just something not easy to design, coz I've been thru...

memilm
I don't quite understand what u mean in some of ur sentences,but I rather like to stick with the combo box UI(a technical term for drop down menu),becoz when u create a new setting for a tank, u r dynamically increase the number of predefined tank, using combo box is the easiest way to do that,sbut for a list of tank is static settings, u can only change them but cannot add more tank setting or delete them.

Tiny
Man! u r just so funny, LOL, I realy like ur humour Tiny
I admire u

Swede
Sorry about the missing "e"...:D :D :D

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I will try to answer your questions.

memilm,
I would like to stick with the dropdownlist because of the small amount of space it takes in an already crowded window. For the same reason the exit button had to go, since it is not essential for the program.
Ending one program from within another is of course possible but requires a lot of coding, which would take me a long time to accomplish. Much longer anyway than it takes you to hit esc. Sorry, but not.
Tray icon and command-line: yes. Been there, done that before. Will be done after I solved the starfish options.

hpman77,
There was not enough room for the names under the pictures, but I solved that with tooltiptext.
Documentation would require more research than I would like to do right now.
I could not find a command-line option to start the aquarium in windowed mode.

James,
No luck so far with controlling starfish positions. If you just smack it to the glass from a grounded position it ends up under the sand, which is also funny. Maybe I'll just put it in that way. It seems to be able to crawl out fast enough.

Of course all of this still depends on whether Jim does not oppose to my registry tweakings.

What about asking ppl here to submit some binary values of starfish's position?
maybe y can predefine 10 diff positions and the only thing u can do is collecting all these 10 position values and make them available in ur program?
this way u don't have to wait ur starfish crawl on the glass and exit SSA and go into registry to recorde it's value repeately.....

I can submit some values if u like

Restart screensaver
 

I found that to end an application you need to call seven times the user32.dll (GetDesktopWindow,GetWindow,GetClassNameA,GetWindo wTextAPostMessageA,SetForegroundWindow functions)...

James,
Good idea, it would be helpfull if you could post some binaries for the starfish's position. But I have to say that I am not sure if I can finish this project. My program can write the position values to the registry correctly, but it has problems with short binaries. Right now if I write "1" as binary it shows up in the registry as 01 00 00 00 where it should be 01. When reading the StarfishOnGlass key the aquarium does not recognize it and changes back to default 00. Result: a floating starfish.
Since I use a registry module that was written by someone else, it could take a while to figure out what is going wrong.

memilm,
For someone who "cannot write programs" you know an awful lot about it. I must confess that I am not really a programmer either but I just like to toy around with Visual Basic. Most of the difficult code I use was copied and pasted from various internet VB sites. If you can get your hands on Visual Basic you will see that programming does not have to be more complicated than working with installation software.

Mountainmaster
I've spend around two hours to find out the following Hex values of 9 positions for the starfish on glass
plz refer to the image
A
ec df a7 c0 3d 83 32 c0 cd cc 8c bf
B
9c b3 94 c0 ed c6 12 c0 cd cc 8c bf
C
88 c0 67 c0 16 39 37 c0 cd cc 8c bf
D
0c b8 e7 bf 77 eb 4b c0 cd cc 8c bf
E
d5 31 12 bd 8f e7 42 c0 cd cc 8c bf
F
a7 68 b0 3f 73 cc 45 c0 cd cc 8c bf
G
81 2a 2b 40 fe 49 5c c0 cd cc 8c bf
H
a2 e4 74 40 99 42 42 c0 cd cc 8c bf
I
44 70 aa 40 75 b3 47 c0 cd cc 8c bf

The image shows the starfish at positon "I"

You can search on Msdn from Microsoft for keyword like close(kill) application. If not too easy to implement I'll try to ask somebody for code. I am sure that are enough free codes in internet for this action.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp

James,
Thanks, good work! But as I said I still have trouble writing binaries to the registry. I can now set the StarfishAllowedGlass and StarfishOnGlass, but not the position. I thought I had that working before but apparently I was wrong.
Here is a new version that switches the starfish on and off the glass, but in the process will bury it or make it float. I found that it can correct its position, so this does not need to cause any problems. And should the starfish get stuck anyway I included a reset button. (the reset button sets StarFishPos to 00, just like Morgans starfish-restore registry script)
memilm,
Killing an application is one thing but killing a 3D screensaver may cause serious problems. It has to go through its own unloading routines otherwise it can not reset video modes and other system settings.



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end or reload the saver
 

Probably can Jim implement a commandline option(to stop the saver or reload it) in the next version, or he can tell you what's happen when you set the new fishes and hit "esc"... and try to reproduce it...

And yet another version. I didn't want to waste James's hard work so I found a workaround. My app now calls regedit in silent mode to import the included reg files. Be sure to unpack them to the same directory as the executable.
The file has grown too large to attach because the picture James posted is included in the executable as you can see.
Download from here: http://home.wanadoo.nl/sfinx98/progs/picker.zip

Nice work Mountainmaster :) and thx for what u did, I don't really mind if my work r wasted. but I know seeing starfish on glass without waiting is many ppl's wish.
The weird thing is that it seems doesn't work on my computer...
as I try to set the starfish's position, and then hit apply then hit launch button, the starfish remains where it were, it didn't change its position. But if I manually double click ur 10 registry files and apply them into the registry, it works, it seems ur program cannot appply the registry successfully on my system,
as I can see, ur registry file begins the header as "REGEDIT4" where WinXP's registry file begins with "Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00"
but WinXP can take care any registry file which start with "REGEDIT4" if u manually apply it.
so I try to edit the head myself and change them to "Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00" and STILL doesn't work, so this means it's not the head problem but somehow ur programe is a little buggy with WinXP Pro...:P
Well, I dunno what's going on in ur programe but it just didn't work on my system, weird.....I'll later try it on the WinME after I reboot back to WinME

Maybe u can ask memilm how did he port the registry, he's original one port the registry from a txt ini file.

Does anyone with WinXP Pro experienced the same problem or just me?

Any fish picker beta tester here? I saw there are many downloads of the attachment, but only few replies....

Same on my XP system...

My app makes a direct call to regedit.exe, maybe it has a different name in XP? If so can you tell me which? I could also call the regfile directly, but that way it is impossible to set the silent flag /s.
Why did that **** M$ have to change so many things in XP, it's a programmer's nightmare.

The WinXP regedit.exe has the identical name...

From WinXP helpfile:
"The registry in Windows XP, 64-Bit Edition is divided into 32-bit and 64-bit keys. Many of the 32-bit keys have the same names as their 64-bit counterparts, and vice versa. The default, 64-bit version of Registry Editor that comes with Windows XP, 64-Bit Edition displays only the 64-bit keys.

To view or edit 32-bit keys from the registry of a computer running Windows XP, 64-Bit Edition, you must use the 32-bit version of Registry Editor in the %systemroot%\Syswow64 folder. You must close the 64-bit version of Registry Editor before you can open the 32-bit version, and vice versa. There are no differences in the way you perform tasks between the 32-bit version of Registry Editor and the 64-bit version of Registry Editor.

To open the 32-bit version of Registry Editor, click Start, click Run, type %systemroot%\syswow64\regedit, and click OK."

Maybe this is a clue...

Swede,

You mean you have the 64-bit version? But I thought that only runs on an Itanium processor! http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/overview.asp
Or did this accidently sneak into the helpfile of the regular 32-bit version?
This is not really helpful I am afraid. Anyway I uploaded a new revision which also passes the working directory to regedit. I keep hoping.

BTW what happens when you type in the command line: regedit.exe /s x:\apppath\a.reg

where x is of course your drivename and apppath.... well, you get the point.

I tried
with regedit.exe D:\Documents and Settings\James\Desktop\Fish picker\h.reg
Nothing happend....checked with the value and it remains the same...no wonder why it doens't change at all

FINALLY!!
After so may trial of tests to figure out the problem...I finally know why.....

If u type
regedit.exe D:\Documents and Settings\James\Desktop\Fish picker\h.reg
windows will popup a dialog saying error becoz the path is incorrect, and reg cannot be imported
but if u type
regedit.exe D:\FishPicker\h.reg
it succefully imported the value after u click ok on a pop-up asking r u sure....

can u see the differernce?
YES, the path name!!!!! If any path name contains any space char, the path become invalid. and since the slient flag /s means slient, it won't report if it faild to import the registry.....

Man, it's the stupid Windows problem not ur problem....@@
stupid M$

but is there anyway to solve this?
maybe u can try those programming forum and ask for a way to solve the path name problem


Swede
Try to unpack them in a folder with its path name has no spaces...
it'll work :)

Yes, I noticed it too. In winMe it also gives an incorrect path error in silent mode. I previously had the app installed in a dir with short name when I tested. But trimming the spaces does not help. I think I will have to dig up my dosname converter module, which will convert to something like: d:\docume~1\James\desktop\fishpi~1\h.reg
Maybe you could try that name for me?

Speaking of my dosname converter, you can download that here: http://home.wanadoo.nl/sfinx98/progs/dosnaam.zip

ha..I was going to post this solution and u already come out with that...nice one....
yes, this one works very well....

[off topic]
I really like ur dosname converter
it's really a nice little tools.....
u really like one of my friend who always likes to make himself some interesting modules onyl for fun.....he's a programming enthusiast....I guess u r the same rn't u?:hmad:
anyway...I admire that....I also like to programming but not as enthuse as my friend
[/off topic]

James, which is why pathnames on Windows 95, 98, 2000, and XP should always have quote (") marks around them.

"C:\Program Files\Accessories\Windows NT\Wordpad.exe"