Unity screensaver framework for Windows soon to be released!

I'm already off setting up the framework to my (hopefully Unity-based) saver program and so far I'm pleased with the direction it seems to be going in generally. I have a game that I've been working on this year which is completed and even exceeds my vision, but not quite 100% finished...and I hesitate to jump into another project until I can honestly say I am done with it. Every project has its' obstacles and brain-crushing conundrums that make us temporarily crazy until all we can see are little green space aliens leaping around on the furniture.

I usually take that opportunity to simply stop, pull back and look at the big picture instead of focusing on a microscopic level like a maniacal jeweler facing a life-threatening deadline. Getting wrapped up in that intellectual fishing-line knot will only lead to imminent pre-mature burnout syndrome and will send your project to the Backburner Wastelands in which 91% [insert your chosen % here] of all projects retire ultimately.

Moderation is the key to balance which promotes a healthier environment and bolsters productivity - not to mention having pen/paper/e-device handy for those inspirational ideas when you are away clearing your head and doing other things. Personally, I wish there was a paper BOOK with all the Unity references and manual errata so that I could do just that: get off the friggin' computer for a while and visit a park bench with my 19th Century-style study material and let inspiration surround me. I'm on the computer way too much; it's a sickness with no cure. Well, there are cures, but for me, most remedies are worse than the symptoms.

Our projects may not be finished completely by tonight, but they will ultimately be finished over a floating weighted sine lerp. The deciding variables are derivative of the methods in which we choose; just avoid Stack Overflow at all costs.

 

Lol yes I know what you mean. Personally I have about a 3-5 day attention span of focus on a given project where it seems to be the thing that really interests me then after that time my perspective and mood has shifted and the project just doesn't seem interesting any more. So then I switch to something quite different. Eventually it's fairly inevitable that this particular project will suddenly look cool and appealing and I'll dive into it again. One of these times it'll actually get finished off.

I think it's good not to push yourself to have to do something. I prefer being intuitive and going with the flow rather than making the natural shifts in my experience out to be a bad thing. They are a blessing to be embraced. So it all gets done when it does.

 

In my adventures returning to my game again this week, I stumbled upon a bit of confusion after converting everything from being web player based to complete standalone. My game has quite a bit of elements, audio and goodies in the mix - not to mention well over 1k lines of code - and it used to compile for the webplayer build at exactly 30 megs in one file. The very same standalone version build pumps out 170 megs! o_0

I do understand that I have the Unity system installed already within Windows and that the webplayer is making use of that along with the browser plugin, but what is going on here exactly? How did I start with a grape and end up with a watermelon?

As I already made the basic framework for my "saver program" (another new project other than my game), it doesn't have all that much in it yet. A high resolution skybox, particle effects, a couple basic primitive tetrahedrons (or whatever they are called), one 2meg MP3, a few sound effects and about 15 scripts - the standalone build for this is weighing in at 170+ megs already. I gathered up an Export of my project just to see if some tag-alongs made it into my build that was eating space, but nope; my measly little saver program with one level is already sending the end-user out to get another hard drive 'cause I'm pushing Windows off in the name of entertainment. lol I'm not not exactly sure what your bokeh demo weighed in at, but I'm apparently not doing very well with the streamlining portion of my little hobby here.

I was really, truly envisioning having this ultra-compact single-file (like the .unity format) just sitting in C:\Windows\System32 hanging out and not bothering anyone. Nobody is going to have a fit over installing a single 30 meg webplayer file to that location - but dumping 170+ megs of crap all over the place isn't quite what I had in mind. Perhaps the standalone path is just a bad idea in this case and I should already start thinking about the webplayer path again for the saver program. Phew...they don't make it easy.

 

Strange. I have no idea what that's about. Are you sure textures are set up in the proper formats? I do know that the webplayer user LZMA compression which would likely compress-down your texture data quite a lot. My screensaver thing compresses it with LZMA also although at some point it has to be extracted to run it. I expect the webplayer extracts to memory on the fly so you don't see the 170 megs. Try compressing your standalone app with LZMA or ZIP and see if it indeed comes down to around 30mb - that may account for it.

But yeah, for screensavers I don't think people are going to want to download hundreds of megs at a time. I am thinking ideally no more than 10-20 so on average (5mbis) connections it takes only a few seconds to download.

 

With the game project completely compressed using WinZip with the "best compression" Zipx option, it comes to about 47 megs now (I added some things, so that's about right). I guess what I'm ultimately interested in is a container file solution such as the .unity, .scr, or even .wad formats because I throw a ton of art at my stuff like a bad habit. I did raise the texture options all around and my skybox textures (2048x2048 x 6) are indeed a problem I suppose. I'm trying to shoot for AAA visuals without breaking the bank in any facet, but I have yet to initiate optimizations of any kind. Right now I'm fighting the AspectRatio/Resolution/GUI/Scaling monster with my game and is chewing up what little brain power I had left to even chew on some celery. One problem at a time I guess, but I'm just looking ahead to keep things tidy for everyone.

 

Well my screensaver system is a container, one exe containing all media and data. It's just that in order to RUN it you have to extract it somewhere.

 

Just wanted to mention that I think this is a great addition to the "build targets". I've got Dashboard widgets on the Mac, so being able to publish screensavers to Windows sounds like a cool option that I'll most likely use.

You asked about pricing: I'd see this kind of thing between $50 and $100, more leaning towards the upper end. Given the amount of work that went in there and the assumption that it's kind of "special purpose", I wouldn't go too low. I don't think this is the kind of thing that every Unity user wants or needs, and those that really want it will pay a fair price (which $100 would be for that kind of tool). I would also assume that a lot can go wrong with this kind of thing (due to complexity and "Windows" environment), so I'd prepare myself for quite a few support issues coming up and also factor that into the price.

 

Yah, thanks for the good advice. I am a little concerned about providing support, it's not a straightforward piece of software but I guess that will all goes to making it better.

 

Any news?

 

lol I was just thinking to myself that someone would probably want an update any day now.

However, I haven't worked on this since my last update. I've been losing interest in it and despite my early enthusiasm I had to admit to myself that it probably wouldn't be enough of a business to sustain a living. But more than that I kind of let go of the idea of making money from software, at least in the short term, to relieve myself of the pressure I put myself under to get stuff done. I'm looking at it more as a hobby at the moment because I have another line of income that I'm working on that has nothing to do with software. I must say I do feel a lot of relief not having to work on this and have been happier about doing things as `just a hobby` than I have felt in a long time. It's freed me up and allowed me to actually enjoy development again. It's a strange paradox that letting go of all ambition to `be something` has let me have the freedom to actually enjoy what I'm doing, which is a much better formula for potential success in my opinion. My heart isn't in this screensaver thing very much. I've been working on a pretty neat, original game that I'm excited about so that's taking any time I have available right now. So this project is kind of shelved until I might strike up interest in it somewhen down the road. Sorry for getting your hopes up. Like I said before somewhen I will finish this off but not at the moment.

 

Feel free to take a break.

Just remember that for all intents and purposes the time you've already invested is a loss - so the question is are you willing (in the future) to put in the hours needed to release the product and make an easy 4 figures?

If you take too long consider donating (or selling) the source for the community to finish.

 

I don't see it as a loss, myself. It's just a change of plans at the moment. I expect I'll get back to it somewhen. I don't doubt it could make 4 figures or whatever but that's not what's really important.

 

Well, I'm certainly at the old proverbial Boolean in the road myself, but this is to be expected in development within some varying degree. For the same exact cause and effect in my regards, I am currently limiting (or should I say scurrying to finally end that year-long game I desperately wish to complete!) all my time and resources to one single project at a time; no more. I even feel guilty for creating a new test level just to safely test all those little ideas we get in our heads at random. My rule for that situation; only if I come out with a prefab that I'll use in the game. If I start to tamper with a new, much more fun project (and aren't they all after a year), my game will surely be headed for that stack of software which lies under the Monolith infinitely with only the monkeys wielding bones to enjoy it properly. LOL

I wish you the best in your endeavors with whatever you are doing and I sincerely enjoyed this thread and our exchanges quite a bit. At the very least, it got the dreaded rusty gears in the back to spin around for awhile and that was cause for celebration alone. Please keep us posted with this project if and when you jump back on this wagon again for another good ride. I think there are quite a few of us who would love to take the journey there.

 

Maybe you thought about selling what you have for this right like it is now?

 

It would take too much explaining in its current state. Unity won't let me publish to the asset store in an unfinished/not quite polished state and then I'd have to spend time figuring out other payment avenues and all that.. Time time time.

I might finish it soon, hold onto your hat. I'll probably work on it tomorrow.

 

With the screensaver demo earlier in the thread (previous page?), does anyone else get it asking for `accept and install` every time you preview it from the Windows screensaver dialog window? And if so, what method did you use to install the app I supplied?

 

Runner replied to me privately saying that he'd right-clicked on the .exe and chose the `install as screensaver` option. The installer is not designed to be used that way.

See, to get a screensaver installed properly it has to go into C:\Windows\System32 folder. However, that folder is protected by User Account Control on Windows Vista/7/8. To get permission to install, the installer exe has to have the word `setup` or `install` or `update` in the filename. That prompts it to request administrator rights. But if you right click and `install as screensaver` it takes the filename and changes .exe to .scr without removing the word `install`. So then every time the screensaver is run/previewed it will see the word install and request admin rights, which pops up a permission window which is obviously undesirable.

The way it should work is the user downloads the .exe and just runs the exe with a double-click.

However, Windows does provide the right-click-install-as-screensaver feature and some people will want to use it. I didn't realize that would work with a .exe instead of a .scr file. If I take `install` out of the installer filename, however, and someone double clicks it, it won't install properly. If I change the installer name, remove the word install and add .scr on the end, they may know to right-click to install, but then does the o/s properly put the file into the C:\Windows\System32 folder?

I guess I have to do some more testing to figure out how to deal with this. Any suggestions?

 

I've been working on the screensaver framework quite a bit this weekend. Fixed several bugs, tested numerous features. Getting much closer to a release now. I'm having some slight problems with the `Unity Pro` mode because the app HAS to start up as a desktop window and I have to hide that window using some trickery, but the hiding isn't always 100% seamless, sometimes it works, sometimes the o/s's scheduling of cpu time causes scattered delays that leave some partial artifacts on the screen etc... so am trying to get that working properly. I might end up leaving it as it is and adding an option to display your own small splash screen window at the start. Either way there isn't much left to do so I'm hoping for release in the next couple of weeks.

 

my own splash screen for advertisement is desirable anyhow would be excited to see this in the store

 

What it boils down to is that in order to have only one Unity built app to handle preview mode, full screen mode and config mode, you only get one choice in how the app starts up. For the purposes of preview mode the app HAS to start windowed, so then it's just a matter of what size the window must be. Since for Unity Free the logo must be shown, I decide it looks okay in a 300x400 window. So that's the splash size for Unity Free. So then for Unity Pro I guess the same size might make sense. I'll have to think about it.

The only other options are a) start the Unity Pro version in as small a window as possible and then it will show one that's about 64x8 briefly before starting up, and b) having two separate builds for preview mode and fullscreen mode which means almost double-sized exe's and extra headache to create the builds.

 

Firstly, I'm glad this is back on track again...Yippee!

Secondly, I'll go with the splash screen option for what it's worth. Not many will wish to double their installer size just to avoid a startup window, but I can appreciate your attention to detail nonetheless and it sounds like you exhausted all possibilities. There's always a chance that UT might make changes to their routines in future builds, but you need to go with what works best today. I find Microsoft's approach to nearly everything they make to be quite baffling with all that R&D money they are swamped in, but that just creates more opportunities for third party vendors to get it right later on.

 

Yah. It has the option to show an optional splash screen already, in addition to trying to hide the Unity window, so all I need to do is show the splash screen before launching unity (I think it does already), and then add a check that if the splash is used then not to bother trying to cover the window up. Having a splash like that actually solves a bunch of timing issues where the o/s sometimes draws the screen nice and sometimes shows a black rectangle. I think it's fairly reasonable to show a small splash image for your company (or product-specific, or whatever) for a brief second or two. Chances are it may launch when the user is not sitting at the computer anyway. It's not totally ideal but I couldn't get the most ideal solution to work - that is, using Windows Hooks to tap into the opening of the Unity window before it displays and alter its position/hide it etc.. just gave me crash after crash and the documentation was terrible so I ditched it, but it would've been ideal. I think the splash screen is a fairly good compromise.

I found a couple of other slightly weird things, such as when the Windows dialog is opening and the user closes it before the Unity window gets embedded into it, the window embeds into the corner of the desktop. Also when Preview is clicked to launch fullscreen, the preview version may delete files in the same place that the fullscreen version is trying to extract files, causing some files to go missing and fullscreen to fail to open properly... gotta fix that too. Those two things and the splash thing are the main issues to complete now, and just a handful of other small tweaks/tests to do.

I keep thinking I don't want to bother working on this but the amount of time put into it already compels me to finish it since it's so close now. I'll hopefully have time to work on it again this weekend.

 

I'm having a problem with Time.captureFramerate ... I use it to limit the framerate to say 30fps when doing a screengrab, since the framework supports grabs in PNG, BMP, JPEG and RAW. It then restores the capture rate afterwards. If you hold down the grab key it will grab a sequence of frames at the capture framerate. When you let go the normal framerate should restore. Now, it WAS working. In Unity 3.4 I'm not sure if maybe something broke because now when I do 1 grab it freezes the framerate and never resumes. It appears the display is flipping the backbuffer at full speed between two previously drawn frames but time does not advance at all. It used to be that Time.captureFramerate=0; would restore the normal time but now it doesn't. And so then I tried -1 and that seemed to work for a bit and now doesn't work either. So something weird is going on here. I am quite frustrated with it and am considering chopping out the whole screengrab code just to make this work. Any ideas?

 

Very wierd.

Can you reproduce the problem in a empty project?

Whatever the cause, unity or you, I think most of us would be happy to leave this bit of functionality out for the first release - screenshots are cool but video capture is beyond the call of duty.

 

I guess it might be something unusual going on in my code. I may look at it again before chopping it.

 

I got this bug licked... nothing to do with the capture framerate, everything to do with me trying to restore a camera rectangle that I hadn't previously saved.

On to the next fix...

 

Very excited to see this happening. Hopefully you can support OSX as well.

 

I'd love to do OSX support too. There is already a method that works for OSX but I don't know if it's been updated for 64-bit. OSX screensavers now have to be built for 64-bit as well as use the official OSX api for opening a display, which makes it harder than just launching a Unity app. That's why the current OSX solution embeds a webkit browser display into the window which then pulls up the Unity webplayer plugin if it's available. It's `ok` but requires the user to have the plugin installed. I'm sure there's ways to do it properly but I'm not at all an Objective C programmer so it may require a learning curve to get it working.

OSX's handicap is having to use their API and write it in their language and use their display. Window's handicap is dealing with the archaic screensaver dialog window which presents several complicated timing problems ... which I've got pretty much licked. I'm beavering away in what little time I have to work on this to get it done, hoping to be done within a week perhaps. It always seems to take longer than I anticipate but it's very close.

 

Cool thanks for your response. At least yours will do PC well.

 

The Show Time Screensaver Framework for Windows is FINISHED!
...just about.

Features and functionality are complete for the initial release. A few minor features have been disabled pending open issues/time and will be added in a future update. I'm fairly happy that things work as intended, hopefully not much in terms of bugs or unforeseen problems.

The only thing I need to do now is write a simple user guide/documentation that gives an overview of the system, how it works and how to work with it. That won't take long. Much of the features are documented already with hover text within the GUI so I just need to pull it together and explain the bigger picture.

Then after a quick cleanup of the sourcecode, I just need to prepare it for app-store submission and away we go!

 

Hmm, what could this be? Another screensaver example perhaps?



I'm just finishing off some documentation, then it's submission time!

 

is it out on the asset store?

 

Almost. I am just proof reading/tweaking the 35 pages of documentation I just got done writing yesterday. Then I just have to make some images for the app store and get it submitted! I really hope to have it submitted before the end of this weekend, so hopefully if it gets approved without a hitch it'll be available to buy next week!

[EDIT: Documentation is good to go Just gotta do the images for the asset store and get the final package together]

 

The screensaver framework has been submitted to the asset store and is now pending review by Unity!

Fingers crossed it goes through with no problems.

I'm so glad that's finally done! Thanks to everyone who has been patiently waiting for this and for encouraging me to stick with it and take breaks when I needed to.

It all worked out in the end.

 

Congrats! I've been silently following this thread the past couple of weeks and coincidently checked the thread tonight. Glad to hear, I will definitely be using it.

 

Great, thanks for the vote of support!

 

If you ever want to expand on this in the future.. You know how the Win7 Dreamscenes are awesome but we all turned them off because they're process hogs? If Unity could be used to create a better version of that, I'd get that in a heartbeat. Also do something interesting like change the scenery based on my local weather. That would be really innovative. Perhaps it would be less process intensive to stream a video or 3D scene to the desktop rather than store them locally.

 

I'm not very familiar with the dreamscenes, I've never tried them. It sounds interesting but sounds like it's more to do with desktop backgrounds than screensavers? I guess the two are loosely related.

 

What did you call your Asset I was looking for it in the store but couldn't find it.

 

lol... you're like me, checking the store every 5 minutes to see if it showed up yet. .... As far as I can tell Unity's asset store team is still reviewing it and I presume (?) I'll get some kind of notification when it's approved. I've been checking for 3 days now and am still hoping it might go up before this weekend but it is Thanksgiving in the USA so who knows. Hopefully by next week.

It will be called ShowTime Screensaver Framework

 

Did this get released yet?

 

I'd like to know too! Lol I'm still waiting for approval by the asset store team. It was submitted about 12 days ago. I am waiting not quite so patiently and emailed yesterday for an update but am still waiting on the status.

 

Nice! Congratulation on releasing your first product!
This looks very handy for my future project. But I do prefer to get this from Asset store for update convenience (I don't actually mind the $20 difference). This reminds me Unity needs to have a discount/gift system for the Asset Store (like in App Store) where seller can give out Discount codes.

 

Thanks! Yes this my first Unity product and I'm pleased to be finally releasing it into the wild.

It would be really nice to be able to do promotional stuff on the asset store, give out free copies, run a promo banner, etc

 

Uhm I would probably buy it but I think the price is a bit too high. Maybe 30$ would be more "right" for a tool like this. IMHO uh.

 

Congratulations on your release IH, excellent work!
I think i'm going to for the early adopters discount, just got a few questions on fore hand.

Does the actual screensaver has a Preference window and what options does it has? like music on/of resolution etc. wake up on movement on/of
Is it possible to protect you're/mine screensaver with a serial?

I find also the 49,-/ 70,- quite steep but if you consider when you sell a single project to a client or sell the screensavers online 7,- a pop you should turn a profit in no time. if you just want to play with it to see if it is something for you it is actually quit expensive.

 

Megmaltese - thanks for the feedback. I feel that $49 is about right for now. I decided to try it out at this price and see how it goes. It's all a learning experience. So far a few people have purchased.

AdminSmithee - thanks also. Traditional screensavers would have a desktop gui window with native gui widgets for configuration. Unity doesn't support that (yet), or at least it could be faked with a GUI that happens to look like the native style. ShowTime offers two modes for configuration, one is to open a desktop window and the other is to open in full screen. Although it has various features built in like pausing/resuming, automatic hiding/showing of the mouse, it doesn't do anything else `visual`. It doesn't stop music playing but you can easily implement that yourself.

The idea is for you to have free reign to implement whatever GUI or effects you like using normal Unity development. So if you want to support a configuration mode it's up to you to implement whatever user interface you choose - it could be just a few Unity GUI buttons, or a whole fancy menu system, or really flashy Scaleform interfaces or whatever is appropriate for your product. I think the idea of a standard basic configuration system is good as a feature to add in future but I'm thinking most people will prefer full control of their product's interface. ShowTime will tell you what `mode` your app was launched in so you can know when to show a GUI versus showing a presentation. I think in future ShowTime will progress more towards an effects generator with a built in GUI system so you can actually create special-effects screensavers without coding, but that's something I have to develop more (have started on it).

There is currently no serial number/key code/registration protection or any other DRM system. It's something I will look into more. I am personally generally against trying to fight piracy and would rather find ways to embrace it but that's just me. I'm open to suggestions. I do foresee that as a business selling screensavers you might want to release a trial version which requires some kind of unlocking when purchased. However, one thing you should consider is setting up a website to sell from and using the Unity web player as a live preview embedded into your site - that's the system I have in mind to use myself. That way you can let the user experience the full-screen (or smaller preview-size) presentation within your company website without having to seemingly download more stuff (except to install the Unity plugin once), and then you get to keep that `trial` experience locked into your site without having to deal with unregistered digital copies floating around. That said I can see you might want to protect the downloaded real version in some way - a difficult battle to fight but like I said I'm open to all ideas.

ShowTime is also geared towards selling screensavers as a business, not just as something to play around with (although you could and you don't have to ever sell a screensaver). That's because I want to personally sell screensavers as a business and I think many other people will too. So when you consider you might sell them for $5-$10 each or maybe even more, you're going to easily cover the $49 in a very short space of time. I think if there was no business angle and you wanted to do screensavers for free or just as a side interest then a price like $29 might be more appropriate. I am considering releasing a stripped down basic version as an entry-level product for that purpose, but that won't be right away.

Above at the end of my long release post I'm attaching the ShowTime documentation in rtf and odt format which I am making freely available to help with your evaluation of whether it offers what you want and to get a better idea of how the system works.

Thanks

 

Here's an image which will be on the asset store, showing the full interface of ShowTime - chopped up into sections

 

If we buy it from you via your site. How will upgrades, bug fixes etc be done?

 

I don't have my site up yet but when you email me to buy it you get the current version. Then whenever there are upgrades/bugfixes in future I'll send them out as soon as they're available by email at no extra charge, which will be shortly before they get onto the asset store as updates.