** Welcome to the Mac Aquarium Forum!**
 

Welcome to the SereneScreen Aquarium for Macintosh forum!

This forum is specifically for technical support, questions, comments, and bug reports for SereneScreen Marine Aquarium 2.0, 2.6, and 3.0 for Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X.

If you have not tested the Aquarium on your Mac yet, you're encouraged to download the 3 fish Mac demo and post your comments on it here!

ohh right.. anyways.. Love the aquarium on my iMac.... But does anyone know is by any chance is there any plans to work with Nvidia to get some better optimized drivers for their Gforce stuff under OSX?

A dream port for me...I've always lusted after the Windows version, and now I love seeing it on my G4 Cube/Studio Display setup. It runs beautifully with a Geforce2MX (~52fps on "flat out" setting).

I didn't hesitate one bit with the $12.95 price...in fact, I thought that was quite reasonable for such a beautiful piece of software. I even emailed Apple and recommended they include Aquarium in OS X 10.2! :)

Keep up the good work!!

Very nice!

Thanks for supporting my OS of choise!

This is great!

Thanks for supporting Mac OS X - I bought it five minutes after reading about it. :D

I'd like to hear comments/concerns/observations/suggestions from Mac users on my Macintosh web area and also SereneScreen.com's Macintosh area.

Yes! Yes! I just downloaded and registered.
I'm a longtime Mac user, both at home and at work.
I found the demo for Windows a long time ago, and recently got a Windows system that would run it well. I registered the Windows version about a month ago, and have been "lurking" on this forum, reading postings. ...learned a lot of amazing things, like about the author, Disney, and that people buying the screensaver just to run on an HDTV Plasma display!

When I bought the Windows version, I made sure to check the e-mail notification about updates. I only found the Mac version was available by stopping by this forum. I suggest an e-mail be sent out to the Windows registered version, for those that wanted notification about the screen saver, that a Beta version is available for Mac OS X. I'm sure there are people that use both systems, or know a Mac user that has admired the screen saver on a PC that would then try and/or purchase it!

-Iesposta

iesposta,

I'm hoping to announce the Mac version and a future scheduled chat with Jim in an e-mail to send out to all those folks who registered. 1,600 or so at last count. :)

Just to add my sentiments to the bulletin board, I too bought the screen saver about 5 minutes after first checking it out. And the $12.95 price made the difference. As beautiful as it is, I'm not sure I'd have paid $21.95 for it. But I love it and plan to show various mac-centric friends of mine! Keep up the good work.

SPAMing Windows users with Mac arrival
 

We at Prolific are VERY VERY careful of SPAM.

Our database contains the email addresses of everyone that has purchased the product online. So far, we have only sent one email notice, which was when the PC version had such a noticeable change that we felt all people would want to know.

When it comes to notifying the Mac community only, by sending an email to every Windows owner, that seems like SPAM to me. I realize that we want to get the message out, and that Mac owners want to be notified. But we think it is more considerate to use normal channels.

We start right here on Feldon’s Fan site. Then we will begin to notify many of the online sites, like versiontracker.

Keep in mind, this is Beta, and first release. We did not want to get the word out to EVERYONE. If there was a problem, we wanted to affect the least people possible.

However, things are looking good. So this coming week we will increase awareness.

Hopefully you respect our strong position on SPAM. We only wish others were as considerate.

Alright. Well I've been waiting on Jim to give me a time for the next scheduled chat anyway, and then was going to tack on the Mac version release info to it.

Remember, in my case, the 1,600 people are totally opt-in.

I only get 14fps on my G3 400Mhz Powerbook (Pismo) 512MB ram, 1024X768. I did'nt see any system reqiurements on the download site. Is this version G4 only?

David Long
davidlong@charter.net

David,

The key sticking point in your situation is the underpowered ATI Rage Mobility 8MB chipset Apple was putting in the 400 and 500 MHz G3 Powerbooks. I wish I had better news. :(

Jim O'Conner suggested switching from millions of colors to thounsands, that helped a great deal, doubling my frame rate.

Thanks Jim

David Long
davidlong@charter.net

I bought it right away, even though I usually avoid CPU burner programs and it felt a little dirty after seeing it on XP several time. I really shy away from Windoze stuff, but this is really impressive and after showing it off at work today no one said, "I've seen that before", so I felt much better. I can't wait for more fish and creatures! HURRY!

The only bug I have seen is one fish kinda disappeared and halfway reappeared as if it was behind the coral, even though it was in front of it, but I only saw it once.

As for features I'd like to see would be the ability to change the color of the background because I hate blue, and the ability to turn off the coral and sand completely and just have fish, kinda like Afterdark or Atlantis. Can't wait for the new coral though... maybe I won't want to turn it off.

mrtew@comcast.net

Very cool screensaver!! I sent in my order yesterday but have yet to receive my code. How long does it typically take? Thanks!

ps I'd agree with the previous poster, the ability to turn off the coral and sand would be pretty cool-- just fishies by themselves (and maybe some bubbles from below!) :)

WOW! this thing is really cool! I registered it about 5 min after I downloaded the demo. I just hope that the Mac version stays up to date and is given as much attention as the windows version.

I love the screensaver. I was wondering do you think you will make the aquarium shot any more "sharp" It seems a bit fuzzy or pixelated for me on a G4 Powermac and an iBook. Great work, registered and happy otherwise :)

Well the funny thing is, you guys are getting the Aquarium after it's been in development for 2 years. The Windows version had humble beginnings, with just 7 fish. It slowly evolved to 10, then 12, then 14, etc. I remember when RANDOM, the Starfish, etc. etc. were added. I think Jim plans to add another few fish, but beyond this point, beyond the 3D background, he plans to add premium creature packages such as Hermit Crabs, Coral Shrimps, etc.

As for the background, unlike other screen savers where they can just drop in another photo, SereneScreen Aquarium for Macintosh (I guess they're officially calling it Marine Aquarium Mac OS X--go figure) may have a flat photographed coral background, but there are shadow map objects (also called "lightplay" objects) which also have to be modeled and texture mapped in 3D.

The coral background for the Aquarium is a 1024x768 bitmap. I know on the PC, you get the best results running the Aquarium at exactly this resolution. I don't know enough about the Mac version to know if anti-aliasing kicks in or just how the background looks stretched to another size.

If we could just clone Jim, we'd get that resolution-independant 3D background sooner. :)

On my widescreen Ti, the background looks fine, although when I switch to 1024x768 I can see that the background is the same image unstretched. The quality looks exactly the same I think. At least the fish don't get stretched. I do notice that when you switch from regular to widescreen windows (not fullscreen) you get the eighth fish, and the two corals on the sides move apart and reveal more of the white coral bank in the center, so there is no extreme stretching of the background.


mrtew@comcast.net

PEIXES

It's funny that I should get involved in the Aquarium since I am a Peixes.

____________
Google.com is your friend.

Morgan, do you get a kickback everytime someone here uses Google, or buys a TiVo? :)

If I did, I'd still be flat-broke, at least in the TiVo department.

People seem to like watching commercials and rushing to get things done and scheduling their life around TV or trying to set a VCR. :rolleyes:

Jim has a TiVo, but I can't take credit for selling him on the idea, that was Prolific's doing. :)

Trouble Report
 

Hello,

I have not posted till now as I wanted to be sure of the stuff that needed to be reported.
System I am running is a iMac/400dvse (256MB RAM/8MB VRAM/13GB HD/MacOS X 10.1.5/all standard updates installed). I am a Macintosh Technician.

Troubles to report:
1). Sound
Bubbles sound discontinues after about 5-7 seconds. Can be restarted by toggling "S" twice. Still times out. Is this because program is unregistered?

2). Finder
Finder cobbles up in the display of windows, specifically the Aquarium Window (and others, while Aquarium is running). Mainly the activity hilight of the menubar of the window gets dimmed, brightens if you click&hold on the menubar of windw, but it dims again as soon as you unclick. Finder is restored to normal by terminating Aquarium and opening any Finder Window. This is intermittant, doesn't always occur.

Suggestions:
1). Automatic Lighting mode is a waste of time. I don't need or use it. Would much rather have a clock based lighting system as has been suggested by others, and would not be difficult to program. Or nothing at all. Can't see the fish? Quit the program!

2). System performance
There is a menubar utility that monitors CPU activity in percent, called Cee-Pee-You. Flat out, with standard window Aquarium can do 70fps at 100% CPU activity, at full screen this falls to 24fps. Faster processors and video interfaces can do better. Point is, these specs are irrelevant. Frames/sec option should be removed and program needs to produce the maximum number of FPS at not more than 30% CPU activity for the Aquarium task. That will provide a safe margin of CPU resources for other tasks. After all, the Aquarium should be an accessory while doing other things, more useless waste of CPU provides one with a $1500 video display and nothing else useful. Common sense should prevail!

The previous being said, I plan to delete the Demo of Aquarium until this thing is better thought out, and bugs squashed.

-Paul B. Pollock

Saw Demo,Paid Money for OS X beta. Great Great Product...viewing on Apple Cinema Display with g4 cube/500Mb ram...so REAL it is UNREAL! THANK YOU. Audio is not consistent...but hey it's a beta...worth the $$ anyday...

ciao

OS X beta is SUPER. MacThank You.

Saw Tivo mentioned a bit in the threads...there is a new Mac Tivo-like device...about $200 from El Gato...mpeg-1...not the Quicktime 6 mpeg, but mpeg 1 is better than nothing.

Thanks again

If we had a poll about it, I'm sure we'd see that a very high percentage like the optional automatic lights which dim every 3-5 minutes instead of lights that stay on for 4 or 8 hours straight. Now what would be cool is independant locking lights. I would lock the back light to dark blue.

In the 18 months that I've been tracking the Aquarium, I have seen maybe a dozen requests for lights that operate on a schedule. Honestly, I'd want the Aquarium to kick out and switch to a black screen after I go to sleep, rather than run the CPU and video card (Even at reduced speeds, see below) for 10 hours.

Are you talking about the "Limit frames per second to 60" or the optional Frames/sec display?

If you're talking about Limit frames per second to 60, well, this is a feature that's been requested by many people, moreso in the Windows world. In some system configurations, having it switched on stabilizes the animation.

It is by no means perfect, but I see no reason to remove a feature outright.

You will find that on the Windows and Mac versions of the Aquarium, the CPU is unnecessarily pegged at 100%, but that tasks that request CPU time are granted it. The Aquarium should not be stealing significant cycles from other programs.

I am hopeful that a future version of the Aquarium will only use the CPU power necessary to generate the number of frames per second being displayed. I'm not sure I agree on the 30% flat rate. Second generation iMacs shouldn't be artificially limited to less frames than they're capable of.

I just want the CPU and video card usage to be what is necessary, no more no less. And I would use the 60 frames per second feature to keep my video card from running 100% all the time too.

Maybe the Macintosh team can tackle this first and beat Windows users to the punch. I know for a fact that it does not require 500MHz of a Mac CPU or 1400 MHz of an AMD CPU to calculate 60~75 frames per second of animation of the Aquarium.

It's unfortunate to hear that you've deleted it.

MPEG-1 is 17 year old technology. PLEASE let it die. :rolleyes:

TiVo can store 20 hours of High quality video on a 40 GB hard drive with MPEG-2.

With MPEG-1, you're talking maybe 4-6 hours on the same hard drive.

New to the Forum
 

I didn't hesitate for a minute to purchase the program after downloading the demo. I was happy as a clam, until I upgraded to QT6 and lost my bubble machine pacifier. I searched the SereneScreen website and am glad to have found this forum. I hope the "fix" will be out soon otherwise I might just have to reinstall QT5:D
G4 400 PCI Graphics
OSX 10.1.5
768mb RAM

Paphitis,

You won't have to wait too long. Don't bother re-installing QT5.


Jim O'Connor

Go get it. Keep QT6 and bubble sound. V1.1.0 is out.

Speedy Beta cycle you guys have.

Ok, I've sent out 150 e-mails to all the people who signed up for news on the Mac version.

v1.1 is neat! Nice work, Jim!
 

The thing that amazed me is the 50% increase in frame rate I'm getting in the "Max" mode. I was getting a nominal 54-56 fps on my iBook 700/128 MB RAM/OS X 10.1.5/QT6. That's screen-saver mode. Now, with bubbles on I get ~74 fps and ~76 with bubbles off.

What I'd like to see are some intermediate constant frame rate settings, between 30 and 60. Personally, I'd like to run at 45 fps.

I did find the "shimmer" wording misleading and didn't know what it meant until I read the comments in another thread on this forum.
++++++++++
This thing is really beautiful.

I hope they expanded the wording on the "other site" where I made the purchase as to WHY one should download the demo and try it first. It wasn't clear to me: the fact that it might not run on a particular Mac.

Bob P.

Let me just echo the sentiment of so many others when I say 'thanks' for bringing this program to the Mac platform. I know Mac users are a minority, and it doesn't always make good financial sense to invest in porting software to the Mac, but we certainly appreciate it.

Special thanks to the developers who ported the software. I can't imagine how much time and energy went into developing this , but I'm so glad to see that none of it was lost on the Mac version.

As Mac users we are accustomed to not having everything that the PC world offers, but with a program like this available I think we can safely say we have the best of what the PC world has.

If you look no farther then the number of Macs outh there compared with the number of PCs, then a software developer would naturally conclude that it wouldn't be worth it to develop for the Mac. But raw numbers don't always tell the whole story.

Thanks to the extremely faithful port by Jim O'Connor and his team, the Aquarium has been very well-received by the Mac community, and sales are running at about 50% of the PC version.

The very fact that Mac users are vastly outnumbered may contribute to the success of Mac products. Mac users seem to understand that the only way to keep companies developing for the Mac is to BUY the software.

Another thing I've noticed is that, for the most part, our Mac customers are far more polite and understanding when it comes to customer support. Almost like, "Very sorry to bother you with this, but your program seems to cause my Mac to burst into flames. It's still the best program I've ever bought."

I am also a mac user and a new registered user of SereneScreen and would like to also thank the efforts of does who made it possible.

And if you really want more mac faithful support I would suggest that the next update be available simultaneously for Mac and PC. I gives us a warm fuzzy feeling and tells us you really care :-)

Roy

Well, that may be asking a bit too much -- holding up the PC version for several weeks while the conversion gets done.