______ _ ______ _
| ___(_) | ___ \ |
| |_ _ _ __ ___| |_/ / | __ _ ___ ___
| _| | | '__/ _ \ __/| |/ _` |/ __/ _ \
| | | | | | __/ | | | (_| | (_| __/
\_| |_|_| \___\_| |_|\__,_|\___\___|
(c)copyright 2008 Wayne IV Mike
AKA, Wayne "dappa" Mike
"Make impossible possible, even when winnings illogical, loosings still far
from optional."
"Refuse to give-up your mistakes dont define you, they dont dictact where
your heading, they remind you."
Contents:
=========
1: About FirePlace.
2: Installing FirePlace.
3: System Requirments
4: Creating Your Own MOTD File.
5: Creating Your Own Playlist File.
6: Copyright Details.
7: Contacting The Author.
8: Reporting Bugs.
9: Creating Your Own Font.
10: Greetings And Respect.
1: About FirePlace:
===================
Well i did always say i would release three screensavers. And here is the third sorry it took
so long. im sure everyone in the scene remembers and loves the good old fire-effect.
well now you can kick back and chill to the soothing sound of fire, acompanied by your own
music playlist.
After good while of incativity and all round general laziness on my part the
FirePlace effect was gathering dust rapidly on my hard-drive. I then lost my nephew
camden on the 18th July 2008. This set me back even more for a while, but i wanted to
do something to forever imortalise his name and i thought what better than to finish this
thing and release it, dedicating it to little camden lindo.
So just like the message says on the about dialog. This screensaver is dedicated to camden
lindo. sunrise July 18th 2008 - sunset July 18th 2008.
2: Installing FirePlace:
========================
2.1 If installing the screensaver from a zip distribution then please make sure you copy
all of the following files to your windows root directory.
(Dir) fire_data
(Dir) fire_fonts
(File) bass.dll
(File) hermes.dll
(File) ptc.dll
(File) ptcdebug.dll
(File) FirePlace.scr
Now just right click any where on your desktop select properties. You should now be presented
with a display properties dialog. Click on the 'screen saver' tab and then select fireplace as
your active screensaver in the screen saver drop down.
2.2 If installing from an installer then just simply double click the installer follow the on screen
instructions.
Once the installation has completed successfully. right click any where on your desktop select
properties. You should now be presented with a display properties dialog. Click on the 'screen saver'
tab and then select fireplace as your active screensaver in the screen saver drop down.
2.3 It is important to note that the screen-saver now comes packed with an example pls [playlist]
and four mp3's. just enable the 'play playlist' option from the screensaver settings dialog to
start the music rolling.
3: System Requirements:
=======================
The FirePlace Screensaver does not need a 3d accelerator to run. all rendering is done in software
using direct-x. Natively the screensaver runs in a resolution of 1024x768-32bpp but it will try to
fall back to a secondary resolution of 640x480-32bpp if the primary mode cannot be set.
So to run the screensaver i would say that a minimum spec something like the bellow would be fine :=
a) A Graphics Card with atleast 2MB onboard VRAM.
b) A sound card (if you want music and sound effects).
c) A monitor that can support a resolution of 1024x768.
d) A CPU running at 800mhz or above.
e) Some RAM of about 64MB should be fine.
f) And one of the following operating systems: Windows-2000, Windows-XP or Windows-VISTA.
I think that older versions of windows should be fine to. Although i have not tried running the screensaver
on them myself. So any of you with machines still running windowsME and windows98 please drop me a mail if
you manage to install and run this on your box.
4: Creating your own MOTD file:
===============================
4.1: First create a file called motd.txt in the fire_data folder that got created in
the root of your windows directory when you installed the screensaver. If there
is already one in there then you may edit that if you want to.
Each line in the motd file represents one message to be displayed to the reader.
4.2: The message of the day file must be set out in a very specific format see bellow
for a detailed explanation.
message xPosition yPosition displayTime
'message' is the text we want to display to the reader note spaces in the common
sense are not permited so 'hello world' would have to be 'hello+world' in the
motd script file. where the '+' character denotes a space.
'xposition' and 'yposition' are the coordinates where the messages first character
gets renders all later characters are simply offsets to this position. It is
important to note that this value is in pixels.
'displayTime' is the amount of time in milliseconds that we want the current message
to stay on screen for. So if we wanted to display hello world for 10 seconds this
parameter would be set to 10000
***NOTE*** all motd scripts must be in upper-case only. Lower-case characters are not
supported except for some special character rendering.
So with all this in mind lets see how the above line would actually be stored in the
motd text file.
HELLO+WORLD 0 0 10000
HELLO+EVERYONE 0 0 5000
4.3: As we have just seen spaces are denoted by a plus character in the motd script file but
this is not the only special character that can be used bellow is a list of the special
characters and there meanings.
+ = 'space character, this is about 50 pixels'.
* = 'pad one pixel to the right'.
- = 'new line character'.
e = '.' full stop character.
f = '@' at character.
h = 'yellow and blue star'.
g = 'baby wayne head'.
numbers are also handled by using special characters this was done to stop mail and text
scanners from collecting valid email addresses and contact number from the motd script file.
[ = 'character 0'
\ = 'character 1'
] = 'character 2'
^ = 'character 3'
_ = 'character 4'
` = 'character 5'
a = 'character 6'
b = 'character 7'
c = 'character 8'
d = 'character 9'
5: Creating Your Own Playlist file:
===================================
5.1: First create a file called pls.txt in the fire_data folder that got created in
the root of your windows directory when you installed the screensaver. If there
is already one in there then you may edit that if you want to.
5.2: Each line in the pls file represents one track to be played in the screensaver.
And each line must be an absolute path for example.
C:\MyMusic\Ambient\Track01.mp3
C:\MyMusic\Ambient\Track02.mp3
It is also important to note that the tracks in the playlist do not have to exist
in the same directory or even drive. the bellow would also be valid.
C:\MyMusic\Ambient\Track01.mp3
C:\MyMusic\Ambient\Track02.mp3
D:\MyMusic\Rock\Track01.mp3
E:\MyMusic\HipHop\Track02.mp3
Thats pretty much all there is to the pls file. these tracks if valid will now be
played in the screensaver one at a time. and once the last track has been played
it will loop back to the first entry in the file.
6: Copyright Details:
=====================
This program is freeware, you may use it and distibute it as you see fit. the only
thing i would ask is that this file always gets distributed with the application.
this software does not have a copyright notice slaped all over it for the sole reason that
i wanted it to be as custamizable as possible. So please respect the author, respect freeware,
and give credit where it is due.
7: Contacting The Author:
=========================
Email: wayne.ivor@googlemail.com
ICQ: 51991112
8: Reporting Bugs:
==================
Its always good to know if you have experienced problems with any of my applications so please
drop me an email if you have, and i will be sure to try and solve them for you. by releasing an
updated version of the application.
please report bugs to := wayne.ivor@googlemail.com
9: Creating Your Own Font:
==========================
There is no reason why you have to stick to using the default font that came with the screensaver
if you look in the fire_fonts folder you will see a TGA file named font-template.
This file contains a series of 50x50 cells each one containing a character from the alphabet or a
number/special character.
It is very important to note that when designing a new font, you put the correct character in the
correct cell. and that each character you create fits into each cell correctly. You must also always
design your characters on a solid back background.
A colour of black or r[0],g[0],b[0] is treated as being totally trasparent. So do not use this colour
to solidify your characters. It could however be used to make transparent areas on your fonts ;-)
After you have created all your characters remove all the white cell guide lines from your font-template
by replacing them with black r[0],g[0],b[0].
Now all you have to do is save the font-template tga back to the disk. making sure it is saved in the
following format -> uncompressed/32bpp Next simply rename the original font.tga file to font01.tga and
rename the font-template.tga file to font.tga making it the active font for the screensaver.
10: Greetings And Respect:
=========================
This is the part i give a shout out to all the good people that have helped me along the way.
PEOPLE:
Adrian Barnett := For being my number one critique.
Brian Beuken := For believing in me, and taking me on straight out of high school.
Calvin Randle := For being a true friend, And always lending an ear.
Colin Bigmore := For suggestions and bug finding.
Margaret Mike := Your the best. Thanks for everything.
My Two Sons := Wayne And Kyle, leave my keyboard alone.
Nicola Mike := For being a super wife. ;-) ... "Do i get my dinner now... ?"
Peter Cole := For support over the years.
Roy Williams := Keep on singing my friend. And thanks for the MOTD.
Simon Weare := For being a true friend, And always having my back.
Vincent Mike := You always inspire me. And keep me focused.
Hope You Enjoy The ScreenSaver
Wayne "dappa" Mike. / fluid