ScreenSaver
Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Beginners Area/ScreenSaver
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| How do you make a B3d exe file into a screensaver? |
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| i made a screensaver by taking off the .exe and renaming to .scr i also didnt have any interface stuff for windows to use, and i also had to store all the images internally in a data array, it seems it didnt like loading images, it was a lot of trial and error...... |
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| There was a previous topic about screensavers: http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=60409#673566 A screensaver executable is just the same as a standard executable, it only has a different file extension (.scr instead of .exe), that's all. |
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| There's a further slight diffrence: It won't find the media files since it thinks it was started from c:/ (as far as I remember). You have to add this line: changedir systemproperty("Appdir") Now it will act as an ordinary EXE. The SCR file must be copied to the system folder, then it will be listed automaticly in the screensaver dialog. But even now you'd need to copy the media files to the system folder too, that's no good. Better use a Packer like Molebox, or store the media in DATA space, as PowerPC603 suggested. |
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| How do you store media in a DATA space? |
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| Use Visual Blitz, it can read images and store them into data-statements. It also creates code to retreive the data from the data-statements so you can transform the data-statements into a Blitz-image for further use. It also transforms files into data-statements and generates code to recreate the file from those data-statements. Other files, like sounds, 3D-models, textures, ..., you can use a datapacker like jfk mentioned, I never tried such tools so I cannot say which one to use or which one is best. If you cannot afford Visual Blitz, you can use the demo, but it cannot save files and also cannot compile the executables. But you can generate the data-statements (I think) from images (JPG, BMP, ...), highlight all code that Visual Blitz generates, copy and paste that code into the Blitz3D IDE and use it from there. You can check it out here: http://www.blitzbasic.com/toolbox/toolbox.php?tool=4 |
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| What I do for all of my screensavers is have it install them in the Program Files directory and write a key to the registry with the path that it was installed to. Then the screensaver portion thats run from system32 (a vb app) looks for the path and calls the actual exe, then the exe changes its path based on the value in the registry. |
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| I didnt do all the fancy stuff with registry keys and changing directory, although this probably is the best way to go if you are going to make lots of them... I store images into arrays (eg dim picdata(x,y)) then read the colour data into them for each pixel this is what i did, not perfect coding but it worked...
Graphics 800,600
Global butt1=LoadAnimImage("bug_butterfly01.png",32,32,0,20)
Global butterfly
Dim imagefr(20,31,31)
For i=0 To 19
SetBuffer ImageBuffer(butt1,i)
For x=0 To 31
For y=0 To 31
If y=0 Or y=16
li$="Data "
EndIf
GetColor x,y
rgb=MakeRGB(ColorRed(),ColorGreen(),ColorBlue())
imagefr(i,x,y)=rgb
If y=15 Or y=31
li$=li$+Str(rgb)
DebugLog li$
Else
li$=li$+Str(rgb)+","
EndIf
Next
Next
Next
makebutterfly()
i=0
SetBuffer BackBuffer()
Repeat
Cls
DrawImage butterfly,100,100,i
If KeyHit(208) Then i=i+1
If KeyHit(200) Then i=i-1
If i>19 Then i=0
If i<0 Then i=19
Color 250,180,0
Text 200,200,i
Flip
Until KeyHit(1)
End
Function makebutterfly()
butterfly=CreateImage (32,32,20)
For i=0 To 19
SetBuffer ImageBuffer(butterfly,i)
For x=0 To 31
For y=0 To 31
rgb=imagefr(i,x,y)
Color ExtractRed(rgb),ExtractGreen(rgb),ExtractBlue(rgb)
Plot x,y
Next
Next
Next
SetBuffer BackBuffer()
End Function
Function MakeRGB(r,g,b)
r=r Shl 16 ; Move red component two bytes to the left
g=g Shl 8 ; Move green component one byte to the left
result=r+g+b ; Add them up
Return result ; And send the result right back at ya'
End Function
Function ExtractRed(rgb)
result = rgb And 16711680 ; 00FF0000 in Hex. Anding with this eliminates all non-red values.
result=result Shr 16 ; Move red component two bytes to the right
Return result ; And send the result right back at ya'
End Function
Function ExtractGreen(rgb)
result = rgb And 65280 ; 0000FF00 in Hex. Anding with this eliminates all non-green values.
result=result Shr 8 ; Move green component one byte to the right
Return result ; And send the result right back at ya'
End Function
Function ExtractBlue(rgb)
result = rgb And 255 ; 000000FF in Hex. Andin with this eliminates all non-blue values.
Return result ; And send the result right back at ya'
End Function
the ExtractBlue(rgb) , ExtractRed(rgb) , ExtractGreen(rgb) and makergb(rgb) functions were from the archive, i have forgotten who wrote them or the post, sorry.... you might make sense of it...i then selected all the debuglog and copy pasted it into a bb file as a collection of data staements... |
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a simple solution to convert a picture to a data-segment would also be:
f$="mypic.bmp"
pic=loadimage(f$)
wr=writefile("temp_data.bb")
writeline wr,"."+replace$(f$,".","_")
writeline wr,"Data "+imagewidth(pic)
writeline wr,"Data "+imageheight(pic)
setbuffer imagebuffer(pic)
lockbuffer()
for j=0 to imageheight(pic)-1
z$="Data "
for i=0 to imagewidth(pic)-1
rgb=readpixelfast(i,j) and $ffffff
if i<(imagewidth(pic)-1)
z$=z$+"$"+hex$(rgb)+","
else
z$=z$+"$"+hex$(rgb)
endif
next
writeline wr,z$
next
unlockbuffer()
closefile wr
end
(just typed, there may be typos) Now there should be a file named temp_data.bb. You can copy paste it to your program, or use INCLUDE. To load such an image from this Data segement, you could do something like: restore mypic_bmp read w read h pic=createimage(w,h) setbuffer imagebuffer(pic) lockbuffer() for j=0 to h-1 for i=0 to w-1 read rgb writepixelfast i,j,rgb next next unlockbuffer() setbuffer backbuffer() |
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| I just pack all my media using the free Pak library then install the data file to windows\system32. |
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