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Digital Lungfish · 06-09-2001, 03:58 AM

"So a hard reset with an ugly 2-4 seconds of blackness? Maybe if both lights faded to black first. A "Cycle the fish every [___] minutes.""

Morgan,

A "Cycle the fish every [___] minutes." setting sounds like a step in the right direction, however, I see a few possible issues which might pop up in the 2-4 seconds of blackness.

1) Jim has designed the aquarium lights so that both foreground and background lights cannot be turned down to their lowest setting at the same time. This means you would still be able to see either foreground or background elements pop out of sight during the time it takes to load the new fish and that probably wouldn't look quite right.

2) Since Jim wants to avoid the obvious headaches involved with trying to destroy and recreate 3D objects on the fly, he then has to force the screen saver to kick out of Direct3D into a 2D windowed mode (like it does now when you access the Aquarium Settings). The problem with this is that when you switch to this 2D mode, you'll get the window border around the screensaver. Also, as you switch back to Direct3D with the new fish settings, your going to not only see the window border pop out of site, but you're also going to get the usual video "sync" as it kicks back into Direct3D.

Personally, if Jim could actually fade out the aquairum and have it so that we would never see any of these changes occur during the transition, then that's the "in an ideal world" situation and I would be all for it. I'm just not so sure there's an easy way around those problems though, but I could be wrong and only Jim knows for sure.

However, if he COULD fade it out and load the new fish without any noticable 3D to 2D and back to 3D artifacts, then I would probably ask for something more interesting to fill in that time. Instead of fading lights out and back in again, how about loading in some randomly selected "fish facts" images of one of the fish from the aquarium? A real picture of the fish in it's native surrounds and a few cool facts next to it so the aquarium users can actually learn a few things about the fish in Jim's aquarium without having to dig around for the info. Just a thought...

- DL

06-09-2001, 03:58 AM	#14
Digital Lungfish Obey the toad! Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: San Diego, California Posts: 2,557	Re: Random Fish Replacement "So a hard reset with an ugly 2-4 seconds of blackness? Maybe if both lights faded to black first. A "Cycle the fish every [___] minutes."" Morgan, A "Cycle the fish every [___] minutes." setting sounds like a step in the right direction, however, I see a few possible issues which might pop up in the 2-4 seconds of blackness. 1) Jim has designed the aquarium lights so that both foreground and background lights cannot be turned down to their lowest setting at the same time. This means you would still be able to see either foreground or background elements pop out of sight during the time it takes to load the new fish and that probably wouldn't look quite right. 2) Since Jim wants to avoid the obvious headaches involved with trying to destroy and recreate 3D objects on the fly, he then has to force the screen saver to kick out of Direct3D into a 2D windowed mode (like it does now when you access the Aquarium Settings). The problem with this is that when you switch to this 2D mode, you'll get the window border around the screensaver. Also, as you switch back to Direct3D with the new fish settings, your going to not only see the window border pop out of site, but you're also going to get the usual video "sync" as it kicks back into Direct3D. Personally, if Jim could actually fade out the aquairum and have it so that we would never see any of these changes occur during the transition, then that's the "in an ideal world" situation and I would be all for it. I'm just not so sure there's an easy way around those problems though, but I could be wrong and only Jim knows for sure. However, if he COULD fade it out and load the new fish without any noticable 3D to 2D and back to 3D artifacts, then I would probably ask for something more interesting to fill in that time. Instead of fading lights out and back in again, how about loading in some randomly selected "fish facts" images of one of the fish from the aquarium? A real picture of the fish in it's native surrounds and a few cool facts next to it so the aquarium users can actually learn a few things about the fish in Jim's aquarium without having to dig around for the info. Just a thought... - DL Steve www.tron-sector.com - www.badcartridge.com - www.classicgaming.com - www.dinofish.com Today is the tomorrow you were worried about yesterday...