MA3 Beta 1 working fine - suggestions
 

Hi

I have Beta 1 working very impressively on a Toshiba Satellite L130-133 (Notebook XP Pro) and an Advent 4211-B (Mini Notebook XP Home) both running smoothly.

Some suggestions:

Have the ability to set the speed of the Pan-Scrolling e.g. have it move at an almost un-noticeable rate, then it still has a proper screensaver effect with the background seeming to be static, but when you look at it after several minutes it has moved across the screen.

Have the lighting on the whole screen changeable not just the backdrop.

Have the register panel show the name (not your keycode as an earlier version once did:) ) who it is registered to.

Set "A" to bring info About the fish onscreen as an overlay, maybe with the fish selectable by magnified window.

Great job Jim,

I installed it and it appears as an icon on my desktop, it is not in my screensavers like 2.6. When I click the icon it starts and when I move the mouse it disappears. Is there a way to adjust the number of fish, etc yet? It looks great on my system. It's running about 48fps.

HP Pavilion dv6000 laptop widescreen
Intel Core 2 CPU T5200 @ 1.60 GHz
2 GB Ram
32 Bit
Vista Home Premium

Drop it into c:\windows and bring it up in screensaver and settings will show up then

MadBob - I'll probably add the ability to change the Auto-scroll speed. Most people like to see it scroll FAST, to get the real 3D effect. They always go right for the LEFT/RIGHT ARROW keys. Your other suggestions are good, too.

MikeL - Just hit the space bar to bring up the Settings menu. Turn off "Exit on Mouse Move". To use it as your default screensaver, right-click the icon, and choose "Install".

Ya, me too - real FAST is better.

And maybe 'p' the scrolling setting and it would retain that setting?

(ie - after restarting it, it would still be in the same area and stay there)
-just like MA 2.6 looks now???:cool:) (I know, dumb suggestion)

I probably need to leave Auto-scroll as the default. Occasionally, people use this aquarium simulation as a screen-saver, and we need to keep those pixels moving to prevent burn-in.

Right Jim, lol good one. I of all should know this as I still use a CRT monitor.:eek:

Add my vote for adjustable speed. The faster speed does enhance the 3D effect, but it can produce a little motion sickness after a while for me.

After watching it for a while, then looking at text stuff on screen the text starts moving too.

I thought we were still on beta 2?

We are - MadBob probably just shortened "Marine Aquarium 3 Beta" a bit unfortunately.

I actually thought it was beta 3 (my bad) feel free to edit the tile.

Beta 2 now running smoothly on my notebooks.

I have no problem with Auto Scroll being left as default, it would be good though to be able to store the speed with each tank you have as well, then when we have it set on the slowest (so you can hardly tell it's moving) or the fastest (fish what fish .... whoosh!) it will start up that way.

Oh and how about the random tanks that can be run on startup having another setting eventually to allow them to come in at any time, so that the tanks change evey 5 minutes or so?