More options on Mac version, why?

[Matt]

Hi Jim

Love the program, can't get any work done now keep staring - thanks

One question though, why does the Mac version have more control over the settings than the Windows version?

Cheers
Matt

[IXNAY]

Hey, more options? Can you name them?

[Digital Lungfish]

Better yet, take a screenshot and post it here so we can see them.

[feldon34]

I have not seen the shimmer effects in action, but presumably with shimmer at the highest, the graphics equal the quality of the PC graphics.

Economize video memory is really a Mac-specific thing.

The 30 fps lock is more pertinent to Macs since there are so many Macs with ATI Rage Pro chipsets out there.



There is an easter egg in the Mac version that allows you to have wireframe fish on the regular coral background.

Most importantly, the Mac version is an all-inclusive regular & widescreen download which supports dual monitors out-of-the-box.

If you have not been on the forum for many months, you may not know that Jim spent 2 1/2 months rewriting the Aquarium in DirectX 8 code for 2 purposes:

#1 So Microsoft would sell the Microsoft XP Plus Pack with a variety of demos including the 3 fish demo of the Aquarium for $19.95. This would have generated mountains of upgrades/sell-through since a total of 12 million copies of Plus went out into stores and on Dell, Gateway, Compaq, etc. machines.

#2 The Aquarium would be DirectX 8 compliant, making support for multiple displays and dual-head Voodoo 2 cards easy to implement.


At the last minute, Microsoft jacked up the price of the Plus pack (Essentially a shareware/demo box) to $40. You can imagine what this did to sales of the Aquarium when people had to pay $61.95 to get the same thing all of us get for $21.95 (or, at the time, $19.95).


And as for the DirectX 8 Aquarium, due to severe limitations in the DirectX 8 Screen Saver Libraries introduced in April of 2001, it was impossible for a screen saver to reliably display a Settings or Password dialog box on any Windows 95, 98, or ME system. So on those systems, the Aquarium would have had to kick out to Windows every time you wanted to change a setting, adding a 8-12 second delay. Remember that XP was not even out of Beta at this point and Windows 2000 was hardly a mainstream OS!

Jim was wholly unsatisfied with this situation and put the DirectX 8 version of the Aquarium on the shelf and grudgingly went back and started tweaking and tuning the DirectX 6 version to eke out every possible addition that the DirectX 8 version had acquired.

The only things missing are native dual monitor support, 32-bit color support, and a few other display elements. These may be added in the future if the DirectX 7 version of the Aquarium (deep in development) is completed and released.

[Matt]

just making sure us windows users weren't missing out on something!!!

[Digital Lungfish]

just making sure us windows users weren't missing out on something!!!

My thoughts exactly. Now Jim just needs to give us Windows users an easter egg that the Mac version doesn't have. Hmmmm, perhaps a wireframe model of the next fish he's working on? That way he has time to finish up the art, but gives us something to drool over until then.