[feldon34]

Originally posted by Dale:

And as I recall, the default installation procedure asks if I want to make it my Default Screen Saver. I guess I just assumed that most people use it primarily as a screensaver.  

The Aquarium has no installer. It is Windows that offers you the "install" option and that is only because it has a SCR extension.

Take any EXE file on your computer and change the extension to SCR. You'll see 3 options: Test, Install, Configure magically appear. This is not the work of the Aquarium but Windows making decisions based on the extension.

Originally posted by Dale:

I guess I'm not "most people here". And yeah, I realize that MA is just a simulation - just as the flying toasters were, and the starfield, and....  

Flying Toasters, Starfield, and the other parts of Berkeley System's After Dark were developed as screen savers. The Aquarium was developed as an application and then morphed into a screen saver. The only reason we keep bringing up this issue is: Don't be surprised if in the Beta test, you find that things work as an Application that don't work as a Screen Saver. Bugs in how the Screen Saver work sometimes require different fixes than bugs that come up as an application. Windows treats screen savers differently than applications, which creates additional work for Jim.

Originally posted by Dale:

When started automatically by Windows as a screensaver, it does recognize the AltLogo.png file in the \windows\system32\ folder.  

Some folks have not been so lucky. It's a PATH environmental variable issue.

Originally posted by Dale:

And what are the modes other than "Screen Saver Mode"?

It's probably not important, but I'm obviously missing something here.  

There are at least 4 modes that I'm aware of that Jim has to spend time fixing/programming:

• Application (just double-click)
• Screen Saver (started by Windows) -- other applications get precedence so you'll sometimes see lag/shuddering
• Windowed (by pressing F) -- runs in a Windows
• Preview -- this is supposed to work exactly the same as screen saver, but in Preview window of the Screen Saver tab, however Jim has already had to fix a few bugs. Remember Preview was not even an option until MA3 because MA3 was rewritten in DirectX 9. MA .99, 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, and 2.6 did not support Preview.

I have changed the thread title to "Custom Logo Does Not Work in Preview" to hopefully better reflect the issue we're talking about.