Beta 10
 

Installed; looks good to me, but I know very little about Clams.
The only problem I have, is it will not except me key code?

The Key Code part of the program has not been changed.

Only one Clam moves
 

Had it up for awhile, great start. For me, only the Clam on the far right moves. When its right shell closes it seems to cut thru the flesh leaving it hanging out. Keep up the good work!

All the clams move if a fish happens to get near them.

There are definitely some ragged edges that need to be cleaned up. One of the main difficulties is the "A overlaps B, which overlaps A" problem. During the early part of the shell opening, the mantle is inside, so the transparent part of the shell edge (which gets drawn first) doesn't have anything to blend into.

Looking good..:TU:

The movement seems about right.. perhaps the "shudder" from changing it's mind as the threat moves away could be dampened a bit more.

Now that there is a means of perceiving depth other than one fish in front of another.. the space between the first clam and the "glass" appears wider than the image would indicate.. This distance would appear to be less than one third of a clam..however several fish can swim between the glass and the first clam and only partially trigger a close response on the first clam and next to nothing on the second clam.. itself only slightly farther from the glass.

The fishes anti collision is perhaps set to keep the fish too far away from the clams. If the clams are set to close at 3 units the fish seem to be set to stay at least 2 units away... unless forced by another fish.

Criticism for what ever it is worth... Nice work on the clams.. we know they proved to be a real challenge.:TU:

The triggering mechanism is based on real distances in the 3D space. Each clam will sense a fish which is 2.8 "units" from its center, and getting closer. It will not sense a fish which is moving away. This is easily adjustable, but I don't want them to spend too much time closed, since they look a lot better open.

Perhaps a tool later on down the road where the user could adjust the sensitivity of fish to clam?

I have the same problem. Back on 11-Oct-2008 I purchased a version 2.6 upgrade, and that keycode has worked with EVERY version 3 beta through 9m. Now it prompts me to enter a keycode (in the "Register" dialog) and, when I do, it says:

Please enter "TESTFISH" or a valid keycode or place a Marine Aquarium 3 CD into the drive to continue.

I don't have a "Marine Aquarium 3 CD". I do have an Aquarium 1.0 CD, but it doesn't work.

It is a 2.6 upgrad code I have sent e-mail to PPi.

Yeah, me too.

Before sending email to Prolific, check the Keycodes section of the SereneScreen website.

The clams are great, the only question I have is in Bet9M when you turn off the stats they stayed off in this version they are on whenever it starts.

The the stats default to OFF in the official versions on SereneScreen.com. They defaut to ON in my unofficial test versions on fish-byte.com.

I forgot to mention that this version also a Wait For Vertical Sync option in Display Settings.

I seem to be missing something (like my sight...). I can't seem to find "Wait For Vertical Sync" in Display Settings (or anywhere else...)

Do you have more than one monitor?

yeh, i couldn;t find it either and i ahve 2

It's on the single-monitor Display Properties sheet. I'm not sure how it would be handled with multi-monitors.

I have a single monitor - but an ATI card (x300) that can handle dual monitors. The setting is present on my Display Properties sheet.

Now - when should "Wait for vertical sync" be selected?

When you want the Aquarium to send its frames to the graphics card when it is ready, not before and not after.

This will prevent "juddering" or "tearing" for lack of better of word when the camera is moving as the viewport is showing before-and-after updates of the screen.

OK - so why wouldn't that be just the normal (default) behavior? Alternative question: when would I *NOT* want the "Wait for vertical sync" selected?

Smoother animation is possible if the program runs slightly faster than the screen refresh. Even though some of those frames get thrown away, there is always a frame ready to draw for each refresh of the monitor. Vertical Sync limits the frame rate to the refresh rate, so if the program has taken longer than (typically) 1/60th of a second to create a frame (due to other programs grabbing the CPU), it will have to skip the current refresh and wait until the next top-of-display signal from the monitor.

The main drawback is for systems (like mine) which can't maintain the same fps as the monitor. At 1920x1400x16, I get about 40 fps. But with Vertical Sync on, I'm limited to every-other-refresh, or 30 fps.

Well fortunately I'm not of the school of development where the program should just make arbitrary decisions for the customer assuming it knows best.

Jim, thanks for explaining.

Having read Jim's explanation of advantages and disadvantages, and "why it matters", I quite agree.

However, I'm not of the school of development where the program should provide an option with a name like "Wait for vertical sync", without some way for the normal user to get an explanation, or observe some behavior that might cause the user to change the option setting.

Keycode section verifies my keycode.
but said I have to pay $9.95 to upgrade to 3.0
Befor I pay the money, don't I rember somthing about a discount for Beta testers?

This must be a card specific thing??? I do not see this option anyplace:(

StuDisney - Send me a PM with your info.

Ralph - If you have more than one monitor, the option did not show up on the Display Settings page in Beta10. It does in Beta10a, which I posted about an hour ago.

I did that, but it did not address the situation that I am in (see below).

I don't recall there ever being a discount for beta testers, but Jim's initial post in the "Marine Aquarium 3 Beta RELEASE & DOWNLOAD" thread (dated 10-10-2008) says "Marine Aquarium 3 is free to recent purchasers of Marine Aquarium 2.6." I purchased an upgrade to MA2.6 (from 2.0, which had been an upgrade from the 1.0 CD version) on 10-11-2008, so I would think that would count as "recent". And, as I said earlier, this 2.6 keycode had worked fine all the way up through beta9m, but it does not work with beta10 (or beta10a), or with the "official" beta9m that I downloaded from the SereneScreen web site yesterday.

For me Beta 10a isnt working at all. I have dual screens running on Windows XP SP2, Direct X9c March2009, Mobile Intel 945GM Graphics Card.

The error if you call it that, simply shows the settings panel and nothing else. Screensaver doesnt activate.

Last version ie 9M was working just fine.

Thank you!
1) I really thought I just couldn't see it (or it was where I wasn't looking).
2) It (Wait for Vertical...) completely solves the tearing (I think I called them artifacts, which might actually be a more accurate term, now that I read the reason for them...).
I realize that you "give to get" (as in all engineering), and that setting Monitor 2 to 16 bit (at least in my case) fixes it too, and you must be able to exceed the vertical interval with CPU processing to maintain 60Hz frame rate.... but oh, the beauty!
Thanks again for the feature, all!

pvernam - send me a private message with your info.

Ad_Enuf - That's a very odd bug. What happens when you right-click the icon and choose "Test"?

Rosenfritz - Glad it's working for you!

I've removed my registry Keys and gone back to using "TESTFISH" to test the screensaver.

So by right clicking and selecting Test it does the same, it pops up with the Registry TESTFISH then it pops up with the Marine Aquarium Settings pop up box then hangs and doesnt activate the screensaver.

This is installed on my Work laptop.......9M was working just fine before across both my dual screens.

This is a total mystery to me. Is anyone else having this problem?

Could it have something to do with this?

I would suggest the following:

1. Delete everything in C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Application Data\Marine Aquarium 3\ (or equivalent if you're using Vista)

2. Use the SereneScreen installer version to install 9m (Don't enter registration code).

3. Then repeat your test with version 10x.

Beta 10 is the first beta to require the MA3 serial... all previous (beta's) would work if there was a valid SS2.6 serial... Which could account for Add_Enuff's woes.. (possibly?)

At least for me this (beta10) was the first time I had to use my MA3 serial

Ad_Enuff - have you tried renaming the file as an .exe, instead of an .scr?

Beta 10
 

Any Beta 10 version with an installer?

YES THAT WORKS! Why I have no idea!...thats a weird bug

Of course that doesnt solvethe overall bug...when its SCR it fails to run....when its an EXE it works. Also I've noticed a 50% hit in FPS

The installer version only changes every 4-6 weeks. There is no reason you cannot just download Beta 10 and run it.

Ad_Enuff - for some reason, your system is not recognizing the .scr filetype, and adding the proper program argument (-s in this case). When you double-click on the file, Windows is supposed to interpret it as "[filepath]MA3Beta.scr -s". You say that this is a work computer - is it possible that someone has disabled the screenaver capability on it?