Afterglow: Run classic After Dark screen savers on modern macOS

121 points by NaOH a day ago on hackernews | 37 comments

I need this for Windows.

The After Dark screensavers are on the internet archive, but obviously they look and run like crap since they're made for Windows 3.x to maybe 95/98.

netsharc | 8 hours ago

AFAIK there are a lot of Javascript implementations, e.g.: https://www.bryanbraun.com/after-dark-css/

: pogue | 6 hours ago
I appreciate the link, but as far as using it aa a screen saver, that's not what I'm looking for.
I would think if this mac After Dark project is open source, the assets would be available to use in other software.

xattt | 2 hours ago

If After Dark was made today, would the toast/toasters have been photorealistic or some Material-design take on toast?

dylan604 | 10 hours ago

"You can also browse and install software releases directly from the Internet Archive without leaving the app. "

That's a fine line being walked there. If they are worried about rights issues and not including the bundles, this seems like a risky FU by building this feature in directly. The part about using bundles you may have without asking questions of origin is fine. Otherwise, why not just include the bundles?

jedberg | 9 hours ago

This is pretty well trod legally. By the user taking a specific action, it makes the user responsible. Comma.ai uses the same technique. Technically their self driving hardware comes with no software. You have to click a button and point it at their GitHub to get the software on it, but it's automatic after that.

CaliforniaKarl | 9 hours ago

I forget, doesn't Audacity also have you do this, if you want to be able to export projects as MP3?

: dylan604 | 8 hours ago
yes, although the I recently tried doing this on a cloud Ubuntu instance, and it refused to see the .so file

schoen | 8 hours ago

We lost a Supreme Court case in 2005 on "inducement liability" (not a familiar copyright doctrine before that).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM_Studios,_Inc._v._Grokster,....

I'm not sure if this doctrine has continued to be applied to anything else.

: jedberg | 8 hours ago
That's a good point. The other examples didn't involve copyright.
Hopefully since it's so old, the copyright holders are cool about it.
ps. Hi Seth, good to see you around!

micromacrofoot | 7 hours ago

winamp did something similar, you actually had to whip the llamas ass yourself

duskwuff | 4 hours ago

From a pragmatic perspective: Berkeley Systems went through a long chain of acquisitions in the late 90s/early 2000s and eventually ended up under Vivendi, which hasn't done anything significant with the rights since a Flying Toasters themed J2ME game [1] in 2006. I doubt very much that they're going to do anything.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESZSufoTPBs

devindotcom | 9 hours ago

I need the Star Trek modules, which I recall waiting overnight to pirate from a BBS on my 14.4k. "Do NOT pick up the phone, mom."

Also Lunatic Fringe - somehow and for some reason a full top down space shoot-em-up in After Dark. Probably for office workers to play, I do recall there was a "boss mode" that pulled up a fake spreadsheet or something.

reaperducer | 9 hours ago

I need the Star Trek modules

They're there. Installable from within the program.

orangecat | 9 hours ago

Dedicated Lunatic Fringe player: https://morphing.cloud/lunacy/

cyanydeez | 8 hours ago

Did you forget to use that download protocol that lets you resume downloads or were you normal. I think it was zoom something.

: jasonpeacock | 8 hours ago
it was `zmodem`:
https://b0b.com/ZMODEM.TXT

Scramblejams | 9 hours ago

I need this for Wayland. Maybe when the maintainers discover that joy in computing both exists and can be a worthwhile pursuit.

reaperducer | 9 hours ago

I wish someone would do this for a recently deceased OS X screen saver I loved.

Someone went through the film 2001: A Space Odyssey and re-created all of the computer screens, with animation.

It was a masterpiece of mid-century design and space-age optimism.

IIRC, the author got a cease-and-desist demand, and was left to languish and die when Macs went 64-bit only.

45sdasf45 | 9 hours ago

"HAL 9000". This blog has how to do it on modern machines: https://www.fluffytech.co.uk/fluff/the-hal-project/#top

general idea, rip the 4k vids from YT and use a video screensaver app

: dylan604 | 5 hours ago
Took a look to links from your link to get to the 4K YT. At first I wasn't that impressed until I realized it was defaulting to 480p. The 2160 stream looks amazing. Sadly, being it's a YT stream, that might be the cleanest I've seen clips from that movie. Color me impressed as I go off to find the full movie like that.

dallen33 | 8 hours ago

Has anyone been able to make this actually work as a macOS screensaver? I'm using Tahoe and when I go to System Settings -> Wallpapers -> Screensavers, I don't see any option to select like Afterglow or any of the wallpapers I installed.

: jamesfmilne | 7 hours ago
Yes it works, but you need to enable it in the Afterglow settings first.

CodeWriter23 | 8 hours ago

Anyone get this running? I installed and downloaded content but cannot figure out how to get it to appear under Screen Savers in System Settings.

jamesfmilne | 7 hours ago

You need to enable the Screen Saver module in the Afterglow settings first. Works great.

: CodeWriter23 | 6 hours ago
Thanks!

nickt | 7 hours ago

In screen savers, scroll to the bottom - and click on the easy to miss "Show All" on the right side. You should see Afterglow in the expanded list.

: CodeWriter23 | 6 hours ago
Thanks!

alberth | 7 hours ago

jcs has this on their blog.

https://jcs.org/

If you are idle for too long, the flying toasters / screensaver kicks in.

Backslasher | 6 hours ago

Semi-related, I redid just the other day the Flying Toasters in-browser with the full logic from the original, toast-juggler and everything.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49432857

Thought about doing it as a Linux screensaver, but I didn't have the patience to actually wait for the idle time, and that way I can share it with my non-Linux-using family.

sharts | 5 hours ago

I’m surprised still that there hasn’t been a port of the classic old old Windows screensavers.

: cube00 | 3 hours ago
They're not as satisfying on today's high resolution displays unless you wanted to also redraw the artwork.

temp0826 | 5 hours ago

I get the nostalgia factor, but is it actually a good idea to use screensavers on modern monitors rather than letting them sleep?

: snazz | 5 hours ago
Leaving it on all the time would probably dim the backlight eventually more than turning it off, but I’m sure the monitor could handle it. Mostly a waste of energy.

nodesocket | 4 hours ago

Is there just the one Mowin' Man in More After Dark?

taocoyote | 4 hours ago

We need this for the Death Toasters from Opus 'n Bill: Brain Saver

rconti | 3 hours ago

The original After Dark, distributed on floppy in 1989, 1.1MB, was $110 in today's money. More than $7 per screen saver!

Of course, the target market of computer users was way smaller than it is today.