Thanks, Jim Sachs.

Right after 0.99.0 was built we turned off double sided polys. That and a couple other changes made a _small_ performance improvement on our hardware and fixed the starfish problem. Your mileage will vary. I'll be interested to find out how much.

So there are 2 builds of version .99?

What version does everyone have?

I want to keep an organized beta forum going with lots of communication. Ideally, every person posting a bug report or issue should list which version they're running. I know on the PC beta, we ran a tight ship and it paid off.

0.99.0 is the only build released to the public so far. I'm sure we'll post a message when the next build is posted for download.

A bug I haven't seen reported yet - with QuickTime 6, the audio cuts out after maybe 10 seconds or so. Perhaps the loop is not repeating itself? This did not happen in 10.1.5 under QT5; it does occur now that I've upgraded my machine to QT6. It also occurs under Jaguar and QT6 (I'd assumed it was related to Jaguar until I installed QT6 in 10.1.5).

Anyway. Occurs on my G4 Cube; also seen on a G4 1GHz Dual, iMac 700 (G3), and PowerBook G4 667 (prior release when that was the high end, not the low). I feel pretty safe in guessing it's not hardware specific.

Loss of bubble sound
 

Confirmed bug here as well. Everything was fine with the bubble sound under Quicktime 5.x. With Quicktime 6 just released by Apple, the bubble sound plays for 6-7 seconds and then goes silent.

G4/466
512MB RAM
ATI Rage 128 Pro

my bubble sounds cut out too on my 667Ti powerbook. Not that I'd have ever noticed because I keep the bubbles off anyway.

Thanks. It is fixed.

Bubble Machine Quits
 

In a previous post Jim O'Connor says "it's fixed." Does that mean that we will get our bubble machine back soon. As with the others it disappeared with the QT6 upgrade. I found it to be very soothing, and masked out distracting ambient sounds. I miss it sorely.

That bubble sound is like valium in computer form. :)

It instantly makes me sleepy.

Jim O'Connor means that there is another beta version being put together to fix this bug, plus the Starfish bug and a few other things. If you signed up at my website, you'll get an e-mail as soon as this new beta is available.

Feldon23, thank you for your quick reply. I went back and found the sign up area to get notified of new betas. Now I will anxiously await its arrival. I noticed there is an uninstaller available for the Windows machines. Is there any for the Mac? Not that I have any intention on uninstalling anytime soon, but if there should be a system corruption it might be handy to clean things out.;)

For those of us, like myself, who miss the bubble sounds, there is a temporary solution I have implemented. Get Forest, available for free at http://www.macunicorn.com/forest/index.htm Download the program and the Other Worlds pack. In the Elements section there is an Ocean module that is very relaxing and compatible with the Marine Aquarium. Launch that module before your Marine Aquarium Screensaver and you'll have waves washing your computer during and after when the bubble sounds stop. Enjoy! :D

{EDIT: URL Fixed}

For some reason or other the Forest link doesn't work, but it does if you cut and paste it into your browser.

It doesn't work cause the . at the end of the sentence got merged into the URL. The solution is to either not put a period, or manually type this:

{url}http://www.macunicorn.com/forest/index.htm{/url}

Remember to change { and } to [ and ]

Paphitis,

To uninstall just drag the screen saver and/or application to the trash. The preferences are in your preferences folder /By Host/ com.prolific.ScreenSaver.Aquarium.*. If you delete this have your keycode handy next time you want to run.

Each time I press B the bubbles sounds will continue for a several seconds then stop.

I have a 366 mHz G3 i Book, 192 MB memory, MacOSX 10.1.5

Ed

P.S. How long does it take to get a keycode? I paid the fee yesterday afternoon and but still have not received a keycode.

The bubbles will be fixed in a future version.

Okay guys - here you go.

Bubble sound bug - fixed.
Starfish bug - fixed.
Double sided polygons - fixed.
Some others nobody caught - fixed.

Want to run on an 8 meg video card, but you get the software renderer?
"Economize video memory." (this SHOULD help those with stability issues because of the driver not dealing with low memory well, too)

Want to decrease your CPU utilization (just how much depends on your machine)?
"Shimmer"

Want to run the screen saver on multiple monitors? You better have a strong video card(s) and a lot of CPU, but you can do that, too. I tested with the new 800 MHz DVI TiBook and an Apple 17" LCD at the Apple Store. Didn't quite hit 30 fps, but close. My dual 1Gig driving a 22" Cinema and a 1280x1024 display does in the low 40 fps at the monitors' native resolution.

Wish the Application would stop using the CPU when the screen saver is foremost so you get decent perf? We do that too.

There isn't a Pause, but Cmd-H will hide the aquarium and stop it from using the CPU. Click on it in the dock to get it open and going again.


Happy v1.1.0. I hope you enjoy it! Your input helped a lot.

Sweet! It works! THANKS!

v1.1.0 Works Great!

On my machine BW G3 400 ATI Radeon 7000, the fps has increased. Before with all 7 fish on screen, the fps was in the 20s, now its in the 30s-40s range. I have shimmer at Maximum.

Thank you for all your hard efforts!

1.1.0 Bugs/Questions
 

I have the new version installed, but I'm confused with some of the features.

* Economize Video Memory doesn't seem to do anything. I tried both on and off and see no difference. How can I tell if it's using Software Render or not? I'm running it on a white iBook with 8 MB video RAM, and consistently get about 30 FPS no matter what the settings (this is the screen saver, not the app).

* Turning Shimmer on and off doesn't seem to do anything either. Is this supposed to affect the water ripple reflections?

* I love the way that you can now turn on wireframe in just the fish. Fun!