Developer Notes

[ESHIREY]

Oh Yeah. It fixed my screwed up background. My fish are still frozen in window mode but the other problem is fixed. Thanks buddy.

[Jim Sachs]

Just uploaded Beta7d. I've changed the coding for the Crystal On/Off button. Hopefully this will fix the bug in Vista64.
http://www.fish-byte.com/MA3Beta.zip

[ESHIREY]

Cool Thanks. I just got it and so far so good.
My fish are still frozen in window but this one is running great.

[Jim Sachs]

Is anyone else having the frozen-in-window problem?

[Jim Sachs]

I just uploaded Beta 7e. It fixes a couple more bugs, and includes an experiment in swapping the logo files on the fly.

Besides the program itself, the ZIP file contains a logo file called SSLogo256d.png. If you put this file in the same folder as MA3, when the program is running you can use the L key to swap between this file and the default texture.
http://www.fish-byte.com/MA3Beta.zip

[Tarkus]

Is there any way, yet, to have the statistics off by default? They interest me only occasionally, and they mar an otherwise beautiful display.

[Jim Sachs]

They will default to ON during the beta test period.

[Tarkus]

Okay, that's kind of what I thought, but thought I'd ask anyway.

Thanks.

[feldon34]

Ok folks, we had THREE threads going with discussion of the Crystal with overlapping discussions.

I've merged all of these discussions into ONE thread here:
https://www.feldoncentral.com/forums...ead.php?t=4561

[rps]

>> Saving of scroll position is in.

Awesome! Thank you!

~Ralph S.

[Jim Sachs]

We're on Beta7e now.

[russnjan]

Greetings from "The Land Down Under". Congratulations to Jim and his team for the absolutely fabulous MA3. Just wanted to add that I have been running it faultlessly with an nVidia Geforce 9800GT card on a 24" widescreen HD monitor. It is set for 1920x1200x32 at present, and it tells me it is running at 110.55 - 112.48 fps using 30 fish.

Having been using MA since V1, this is certainly beyond anything I expected.

Again, Congratulations !

[Jim Sachs]

Thanks, and welcome to the Forum, russnjan!

[jjenni]

Hello to all,
i jumped on the very first beta way back when and have been a fan of this screen saver since. Ma3 is looking absolutely the best screen saver ever. it runs flawless on my geforce 8600gts around 111fps 1920x1200 on my samsung 24' lcd display and vista ultimate 32bit. now the crystal is back and it still looks great but more definition. i dropped in the png file and it looked great in there. now we need the clock feature back in and i think it is ready to go. i browsed through a couple of bugs and the only one i could say i have is the bubble sound does take around 10seconds to start versus the audio starts right away. i really did not like windowed mode but i turned it on and the only thing i see there is as the menu bar goes away there is a jumpiness in the window. the only freeze i see is when you click the menu bar to move it but it starts working after it is moved. all in all great job jim and crew. any chance of this version allowing any background picture being inserted if it is sized correctly? similar to changing crystal file.

[Jav400]

Welcome to russnjan from Down-Under.

jjenni - glad things are working so well for you. I doubt that Jim will let the background be changed, he is kind of hesitant to allow "who knows what" be put in it's place. I think one of his nightmares would be to walk into a local electronics store and see his aquarium displayed on 25 monitors with that "who knows what" running.

As for the rest, I would like to make a note to everyone running the aquarium.

I am glad it runs so well and you are getting such high frame rates. But, please keep in mind that what you are running, although it is considered a screensaver, is really a true 3D environment. It works your video card to produce such wonderful effects. Basically for your card it's like playing a 3D game, and it heats up your card working to do it.

Take advantage of the "sleep" mode function. Use the up arrow key and turn up the sleep mode and slow down your frame rates so it doesn't tax your video card and keep it running flat out for hours and hours. Look at the stats display in the upper left corner of the screen and adjust it accordingly, where you have smooth movement, and a low frame rate as well.

[cjmaddy]

Originally posted by Jim Sachs:

Is anyone else having the frozen-in-window problem?  

I suspect this could be due to having the window span more than one monitor. Those that I have found reporting this problem have all referred to using more than one screen at the time of posting about this effect. - As a dual screen user myself, I have reported in the past about the very low FPS once even a very small portion of the window encroaches onto a second screen. - Apart from the low fps, other things are also exceedingly slow to respond, like the light settings, (F1-F4), and the P key. - On my system the drop can be to as low as 5 fps, down from 111, so I'm suggesting that on some systems, the fish might actually freeze.

Therefore for me, using windowed mode across more than one screen, is definitely out!

Once the window is moved onto only one monitor, everything returns to normal.

[Jim Sachs]

Ed - is your window spanning more than one monitor?

[cjmaddy]

Further to my earlier comment, - I can now report that I can also create frozen fish, at will, on my system!

..... Full details given here.... https://www.feldoncentral.com/forums...ead.php?t=4388

This is the thread, started by Tiny, that first reported the 'Frozen fish in a window'. - You will notice that those reporting the same problem were also all using more than one screen.

[Jim Sachs]

I just uploaded Beta 7g. http://www.fish-byte.com/MA3Beta.zip

This version includes Edgar's fix (hopefully) for the "frozen fish" problem.
Also, I've changed the sizes of the text fields in the Fishpicker interface to fix the problem of text getting cut off.

[cjmaddy]

All fish here, now de-frosted!