Marine Aquarium 3 Comments & Appreciation

[sunny]

Jim, Iknow you're going to remake those fish models...but could resists to post this.

fish sleep swimming

[feldon34]

I think Jim wishes he could push a button and everyone would forget that particular fish was ever in the Aquarium.

[russnjan]

Jim, I trust that your "short" vacation went off without too much drama [although I suspect by your comments you'll be glad to get back to work so you can have a rest]. You have a small grotto in the coral, that would be ideal for the head and first few inches of the body of a Moray Eel. I thought in your "spare time" the image of a Moray shooting out to try and grab a fish would be interesting.

The attached is some basic info on them for anyone interested in what they are ....

Keep up the brilliant work Jim.

Russ
Darwin - Australia

[Jav400]

Boy are you behind,

Welcome to the forums though.

Jim said he would try to make me a Zebra Moray long ago. Thats what the cave is for in the first place.

[Jim Sachs]

Though originally designed to house an eel, the cave can also be home to an octopus or a couple of other shy creatures. With the new Shader code for the fish, I should be able to do some very realistic lighting effects if they should choose to explore the cave. The fish would get darker as it enters the cave, with the directional lighting and lightplay from the top ending at the edge of the cave. Lots of challenges ahead!

[streetwolf]

Jim Sachs for President. Oh wait, it's too late. Hmmmm, wonder if you could get a post in the Fish and Wildlife department.

I've been loving MA since it first reared it's fishhead. Can't wait until MA3 has all it's pieces together.

OT a little. Wasn't DA2 included as a SS in XP?

[feldon34]

Marine Aquarium 1 was included as a screen saver demo in the overpriced Microsoft Plus! XP Pack. They jacked up the price to $40 at the last second, and reneged on all the promises of profit sharing with Jim.

The most memorable thing about the experience? The tens of thousands of angry letters and phone calls from people who paid $40 for a free demo.

[CheriePie]

YOU DID IT!!

I was already a user of Prolific's other product, Lifeglobe Goldfish Aquarium. I figured why do I need more than one aquarium. I'm happy with the goldfish since I don't spend hours staring at my screen. But you went ahead and made me do it!!!!

This version 3 of Marine Aquarium looks sooooooo sharp, beautiful, and intense on my hi resolution widescreen monitor that I just HAD to have it. I was running the demo for only a couple days when I knew I just had to own this beauty. So yup, I went ahead and bought the current version all so I could get my hands on and drool over v3.

My bank account thanks you as well. NOT! LOL Just kidding! It wasn't too expensive at all, even though I emailed Customer Service first and asked about a cross-product upgrade price.

Keep up the great work, and I'll be lurking around, reporting any bugs I find or whatnot (but so far not a one on my Dell XPS M1730).

[Jav400]

Welcome to our forum, and we are glad you are enjoying it so much.

Jim's empty peanut butter jar thanks you.

[Jim Sachs]

There's no real definition for "out". You can download and enjoy it right now. At some point we won't call it Beta any more, but work will continue at about the same pace.

[Nicki]

Let's just hope Vista doesn't throw any more curveballs .

[Jim Sachs]

There was another curveball last night when I tried to add the giant Vista icon. An icon image contains several images at different sizes. Windows uses these for different locations -- the tiny 16x16-pixel one is used for the taskbar, the 32x32 version is used for the normal desktop, etc. Well, Vista not only requires a 256x256 icon, but it can't use the normal Run-Length-Encoding compression - it needs to be compressed in the PNG format. OK, so I had to download and learn a new Icon Editing program. But then I find that Visual C++ will not accept an icon in the PNG format, and stops dead with an error message.

The very inconvenient solution is to compile the program with a dummy icon, rename it as an .exe, use a ReplaceIcon utility to surgically replace the dummy icon with the real PNG icon, then rename MA3 as an .scr file.

[cjmaddy]

Don't you just love Vista? ...

[Nicki]

You must just about be having nightmares about strangling Bill Gates with a USB cable ! It seems we are all permanent Beta testers for Windows .

[feldon34]

The random, arbitrary changes to the OS in Vista make absolutely no sense to me.

If you are going to change something, change it for a reason.

[Dale]

Originally posted by feldon32:

The random, arbitrary changes to the OS in Vista make absolutely no sense to me.

If you are going to change something, change it for a reason.  

The changes are neither random nor arbitrary. And the changes were made for considered reasons.

You may well believe that they are unnecessary, and/or may well disagree with the reasoning behind them, of course.

e.g., 256x256 icons are required for uniform behavior with current (and future) high-resolution screens. Vista will automatically down-scale them.

[Ralph]

Originally posted by Dale:

You may well believe that they are unnecessary, and/or may well disagree with the reasoning behind them, of course.  

As does MOST of the rest of the world.. thus the popularity of Vista

[Jav400]

Do stupid considered reasons still count?

Evidentally MS has lost touch with the rest of the world to the point where their reasoning is out in space somewhere. As Ralph says, if Vista was worth a flip - sales wouldn't be in the toilet and MS would not be scrambling for a new OS.

[PaulsPics]

Originally posted by Jim Sachs:

There's no real definition for "out". You can download and enjoy it right now. At some point we won't call it Beta any more, but work will continue at about the same pace.  

Jim Hi, I know you have an awful lot on your hands, but if you can and have the time please read my rather long mail below my original entry posted years ago re the new MAT and Wide screen programs came out.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BIG QUESTION ??? reading your original e-mail you state " After the comment period, we will place the product for sale on our website " The comment period Does this mean that I will lose this test program after a set period of time ??????
I do hope not as it does look very good and I would be very sorry to lose it. have set as the official screensaver but sometimes run the old one as a stand alone program started by the icon on desktop. I have not had a conflict as yet .
Thanks very much
Paul Shallow paulspic@XXX ex -tech2u.com.au Sydney Australia
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Jim,
The above statement was sent by me years ago when your updated SS MAT was issued .
I originally bought the Boxed SS CD Rom in July 2002, then joined the forum at the end of that month. Then as a member of the Forum enjoyed several updates and new releases: -
1/- Firstly-- the release of the Lionfish
2/-secondly-- then added the 20 fish selection Further releases then came about
And these were also available through the forum.
3/- Wide screen; Followed by
4-/ MAT with the wonderful Crystal.
5/-Again this was then updated with the wide screen option.

Now over a period of time we have been granted the privilege of downloading this marvelous MA3 to test in Beta.
As such I acknowledge that it is an unfinished product of yours and that, you, as an artist who does not wish to reveal his painting until it is finished, but we have now most of your project in our minds eye.
So why not let us now reward you with some payment for the product as it stands.

Why do I ask this when you are faithfully adding each new addition to replace each Beta test that is outdated?

The problem arises from the fact that recently I have suffered 3 computer crashes entailing getting new computers and hard drives with resultant loss of data, many programs, and license registrations keys. Ok many of the programs are on CD and can be reloaded time and time again BUT many which were downloaded are now gone.
As such I am reminded of this problem when your Beta MA 3 # 8k was downloaded to day and most of the fish were unavailable, search as much as I could I was almost unable to find my original registration code which was of course NOT the one on the original CD disk of the 7 fish. (I have been lazy in that I used your short cut TEST FISH) up to now.
What has prompted me to write this lengthy screed to you now, is that I have realized that due to the constant #*&%@$! Barrage of things that come down with the Broadband that seems to have caused my computer to give up the ghost, despite the firewall and Virus checkers that I invested in, that my on line time wise is now almost terminated due to the end cost of the internet services and the unneeded access to mails as the casual work in Astronomy at our Observatory and updating my work notes is about to end due to poor health recently encountered apart from the downturn in the economy. As an aged Pensioner now in my mid 70s things are getting pretty tight and it is difficult to make ends meet, and unnecessary expenditure must be pruned (this internet connection) and I am sure that I am not alone in this respect
I would HATE to LOSE your valuable program now, having seen the beauty of the product.
Is there any way that you could let us keep the current version as it stands with some sort of permanent login AND OF COURSE SOME SORT OF PAYMENT that you have been contemplating?
Sincerely Yours
Paul Shallow “paulspics35@optusnet.com.au” Sydney; Australia

[feldon34]

Originally posted by Dale:

The changes are neither random nor arbitrary. And the changes were made for considered reasons.

You may well believe that they are unnecessary, and/or may well disagree with the reasoning behind them, of course.

e.g., 256x256 icons are required for uniform behavior with current (and future) high-resolution screens. Vista will automatically down-scale them.  

I fully support 256 x 256 PNG icons. But it is obvious that once again the implementation is ham-handed. Jim is having to jump through hoops to add Vista-compatible icons to the application that really should have been sorted out by Microsoft.