Marine Aquarium 3 Beta INSTALLER test

[Wizwad]

No problems here; everything looking great. Works just as it should.

[feldon34]

Originally posted by Ralph:

as a side note.. something I did not know...the spelling checker on which I rely is not part of IE.. and evidently I must download an add in... or so I was told when clicking on the "abc" icon in the top part of this box..  

Yes, iespell is not part of IE. It's a free plugin.

Firefox has spellcheck built in.

[zeeric]

hello very good screen saver. no problem here with a 7600GS - XP - 1280*1024 - 110 fps - 1 screen - dual core X2 no problem with the fishes scroll is a bit slow using arrow... perhaps it could be quicker ? but no bugs for me proc at 25% max, often at 12 % have some other programmes , antivirus, etc... no collision... well, installer and screensaver works good for this system ...

[chippy]

Just thought I would add,all runs fine, as I would expect,SS and installer on XP Pro/Home/Vista/and last but not least W7.

(I just love running beta's on beta's)

[theOLDone]

OK on XP Pro SP3 GForce 6600

[patscarr]

Works great here.
laptop
XP Pro SP3

[FUCUI]

Installed with no problems on my HP pavilion ze5300.
Is there a way for the screen saver to be disabled or turned off when the monitor powers down?

[snorkler]

Works fine here also!

XP Media Edition, SP3
AMD Athlon 64 dual core
G Force 7350 LE (128 mb)
1 GB RAM

Michael

[Rob62]

Originally posted by Jim Sachs:

The code for the F1-F4 keys has not changed. They still control the lights on all my computers. I plan to give the user much greater control over the background colors.

The starfish will eventually be able to go on the glass, but it won't be speeded up. It's already twice as fast as a real starfish.  

The F1-F4 buttons are not functional on my desktop, running Intel(R) 82845G/GL/GE/PE/GV Graphics Controller. This is the same Intel graphics chip that had the problem with the Beta 7a where it "blew up" the crystal back on 11-19-08. My laptop running NVIDIA GeForce2 Go, the buttons are fully functional and did not have the crystal problem back in November. Both the Beta8k and the installer version react the same on both computers. There is also less "blurriness" on the laptop with the side to side movement.

Happy to hear of the future starfish mobility and the additional light control.

[joniliff]

Problems here...Vista 32 Ultimate. All betas have worked successfully until the last two beta 8's...the install appears to run correctly, but fails when I ask for it to be assigned as a screen-saver "MarineAquarium3 Beta8 has stopped working"...same error message I've been getting on the last two beta's. I can run MA3, all versions, from the task bar, and in the windowed mode...but no screen saver function, and the L key is inop, where I could successfully change the logo before...now nothing.

I've removed all traces of MA3, along with 2 and 2.6 (they were still there and working) with add/remove programs (programs and features in Vista), and removed all references to MarineScreen, Serene, etc., in System 32. I THINK I've cleaned everything, emptied recycle bin...shutdown...reboot...attempted to install MA3...same problem "MarineAquarium3 Beta8 has stopped working", but I can still run it from taskbar in windowed mode OK.

Suggestions??
John

[patscarr]

Originally posted by Edgar:

As a screensaver, it will not ask for the Testfish. This is so you can use it as a screensaver still.  

This is an awesome feature! Excellent idea! Give that man a raise! I remember back in the day when one would walk into a computer store and MA was on all the displays. Now, with this feature, MA3 will be on all the displays. Great free advertising!

It will ask for Testfish when you try to make changes to the settings.

Super! Once Joe the plumber gets home from seeing MA3 on all the displays at the computer store, first thing he'll do is download MA3, install, watch for a few seconds, then try and add more fish! Bingo! A sale is made.

[jleslie]

I ran it in a Sandbox under XP (sp3) and it doesn't seem to have done anything untoward or installed any odd files. Plus it worked! (It took the 22 fish I had before and distributed them amongst the top row of the fish chooser, so got 3-4 of each.)

P.S. can I also recommend Sandboxie for non-destructively testing installers and such like (I paid for it, so can have a separate sandbox for each install attempt, but the free one is great too). This also means I can compare it with the non-installer version on the same system (which is how I know I had 22 fish there and how they were distributed).

John

[jleslie]

P.P.S. it seems to use Windows Protected Storage to store the password. It also installs for All Users without asking, which is fine by me, as it seems the settings like playlist go into the current user - I'm not sure about the fish list though? - I'm out of lunchtime to look).

It did seem to spark some life (i.e. execution cycles) out of TSVNcache (TortoiseSVN cache) for some reason, but I'm not sure why. (I can tell this as it happened in the Sandbox.) I think this only happened on the install, not when it was run.

John

[Rick Simon]

Got a chance to download and install it this morning. Ran the MA3 Remove utility to clear out the registry, then installed on a XP Pro SP3 and a 32 bit Vista Business SP1 systems.

Everything worked well. Both installations initially come up with the Stats display turned off, both allow setting the timing sleep value and remember it through the next startup, both allow switching the logo to a user supplied one (saved in the appropriate folder) but neither one remembers the new logo and returns to the default MA3 logo on next startup (I assume this is the default setting for the non-registered version). The purple gorgonia still does not move when the display is spread across all 3 monitors but I expected that. Uninstallation worked properly on both systems.

[VinceMoll]

No problems and all functions working correctly on both of my systems

Dell 8300
Intel 3.0 Pentium 4/HT
Win XP Pro
Nvidia GForce FX 5200

and

Dell Inspiron 9300 Notebook
Intel 1.6 Pentium M
Win XP Pro
ATI MOBILITY RADEON X300

Keep up the good work!!

[Jim Sachs]

Rick - The fact that the purple Gorgonia is not moving is quite disturbing. I thought I had that one fixed.

[Dale]

What is the expected behavior of the MA3 installer, when doing an "upgrade" on a system that has MA2.6 running?

In particular, what should I expect the installer to do if I have 2 or 3 logos, and have changed various settings for the crystal, clock, and bubbles?

Also, is the installer expected to "upgrade" MA2.6 to MA3 (overwriting 2.6), or leave 2.6 unchanged, or is that behavior expected to be an option?

[Yes, I understand that some of that isn't "done yet" in MA3]

I would like to do a full test of the above, on XP and Vista-32, but I only want to do it once - it's a PITA to make sure a system is in the "virgin" state.

I presume that you're not just hunting for a "it works", without me knowing what is expected to work (and what is expected to not work). So, knowing the "expected behavior" of the installer is important.

[Rick Simon]

Originally posted by Jim Sachs:

Rick - The fact that the purple Gorgonia is not moving is quite disturbing. I thought I had that one fixed.  

If I recall correctly, you did fix the first bug with that. This particular one only occurs when I have MA3 spread across all 3 monitors (total screen width of 4240). Here's the original posting:

https://www.feldoncentral.com/forums...38&postcount=5

As I stated in that thread, I wasn't too worried about it. I suspect it is just a peculiarity with this particular setup since it does work properly under a couple of different configurations. Especially since I seem to be the only one seeing it and I believe there is at least one other triple monitor setup in here.

[feldon34]

Originally posted by Dale:

What is the expected behavior of the MA3 installer, when doing an "upgrade" on a system that has MA2.6 running?

In particular, what should I expect the installer to do if I have 2 or 3 logos, and have changed various settings for the crystal, clock, and bubbles?

Also, is the installer expected to "upgrade" MA2.6 to MA3 (overwriting 2.6), or leave 2.6 unchanged, or is that behavior expected to be an option?  

You should not expect ANY logos or settings to come over.

MA3:

1. uses a totally new registry branch
2. uses a different folder for data/logos/playlist
3. handles lighting differently
4. adds tank scrolling
5. will eventually allow the bubble column to be moved
6. does not currently support more than 1 logo (and must have a certain filename)
7. will probably handle clock/calendar differently
8. uses a different keycode than 2.6

Thus there is really no point for the MA3 installer to try to "import" settings from MA2.6.

MA2.6 has 1 tank setup with 7 fish, no music playlist, and none of the features above, so really it takes less than 30 seconds to setup MA3 to have the same settings as MA2.6.

P.S. Since using PNG logos was an undocumented feature of MA2.6, I do not expect those logos to be moved automatically to the new folder, but maybe that will be something that the installer does?

[Jim Sachs]

Morgan is correct - MA3 has no relationship to any previous program. It does not overwrite or alter any other program. It has different capabilities and higher system requirements.