5 ms·

Aggressively Stupid: The Story Behind After Dark (2007)

130 points by ecliptik 7y ago

dang 7y ago
A thread from 2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14900647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14900647 2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7702105 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7702105 A bit from 2010: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1338175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1338175 (These links are for the curious. Reposts are ok after a year or so: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)
vhold 7y ago
Run a mac emulator to save your screen in your browser: https://archive.org/details/AfterDark2 https://archive.org/details/AfterDark2
DrTung 7y ago
Every time I opened a network share or similar "slow" device on Windows XP's File Explorer (alas not in Windows 7 or 10) I'm reminded of After Dark, since that sweeping flashlight (that goes left/right) is more or less exactly copied from Disney Mickey Mouse something/screensaver which was a clone of After Dark.
bitwize 7y ago
This program was so popular, references to it were made on Beverly Hills, 90210. When the "Peach Pit After Dark" nightclub opened, the wordmark above the nightclub entrance was the same as that of the screen saver After Dark. There was also a flying toaster on the door, and some of the disco lights had flying toaster stencil masks in front of them, projecting toasters onto the dancefloor. It was a very rare instance of a real-world computer culture reference appearing in something as aggressively pop culture as 90210.
mistersquid 7y ago
I have my own fond memories of After Dark, especially the Satori module. The colored whorls Satori produced were so aesthetically pleasing, and I do think part of its durability would be the “organic” quality of the render, a quality probably partly due to the excellence of After Dark’s randomization. Jack Eastman attributes quite a bit of After Dark’s success among the competition due to the team’s striving for high quality randomness: > The other thing we were careful to do was not to put the toasters on a track and repeat the show. Random numbers were always important from that point on. I had done Monte Carlo simulations in my physics work and knew how to produce random numbers in various distributions. I think that was an important idea – we had these little movies, but you couldn’t predict them. > Competitors didn’t have that insight. With After Dark you could just zone out and watch for a long time. Plus it was really a screen saver – it wouldn’t do to have images sitting in one place or in repeating patterns. [0] [0] https://lowendmac.com/2007/aggressively-stupid-the-story-behind-after-dark/ https://lowendmac.com/2007/aggressively-stupid-the-story-beh...
- zweep 7y ago
  Example of even how the most absurd successes often have nailed the important details really well.
pmarreck 7y ago
For *nix screensaver fans feeling nostalgic, there's an XScreensaver version for iOS, FYI
- efreak 7y ago
  XScreensaver is also available for Android, and likely for windows/Mac as well.
Ididntdothis 7y ago
I miss Lunatic Fringe. Simple enough to be learned quickly but interesting enough to not get bored.
- randomfool 7y ago
  Was reminded of this game while reading the article but was racking my brain to remember the name. Thanks for mentioning it, fond memories.
dundercoder 7y ago
Does an After Dark clone exist for the modern Mac?
- mattl 7y ago
  XScreenSaver includes a flying toaster screensaver.
- Cenk 7y ago
  Yes: http://en.infinisys.co.jp/product/flyingtoasters/index.shtml http://en.infinisys.co.jp/product/flyingtoasters/index.shtml It works fine on High Sierra but probably won’t on Catalina, you can download the trial version and give it a spin though.
thrower123 7y ago
Screen savers were such a fun thing, two decades ago. It feels like all of the fun has been crushed out of computing these days. Why so serious?
- spicymaki 7y ago
  I am starting think it is the money that strips all of the fun out of it. Most software developers are not developing for fun these days. They are interchangeable cogs developing CRUD for soulless corporations whilst praying not to be rifed in the next culling. It is hard to produce art in that environment.
- mattl 7y ago
  I still run XScreenSaver everywhere. Grab a copy from the website and compile it up.
- kragen 7y ago
  Part of the difficulty is that technical feasibility of the software is no longer as much of a limitation. Half the things in XScreenSaver or Future Crew's Unreal https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=InrGJ7C9B3s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=InrGJ7C9B3s were things it was really surprising to see on the screen of a computer in 1993, especially one that wasn't a $50000 SGI. But now pretty much anything you can see, you can record an HD video of, and your $100 hand computer is fast enough to play it back in real time. So there's no longer the wonder factor of "how is this even possible? Am I dreaming?". Except sometimes there is. Like with Deep Dream. Or GPT-2. Or the Looking Glass light field display. Or GauGAN. Or a lot of math things. Or topology optimization. Or Wikipedia. But I do think it's a constant danger, forgetting that this stuff is supposed to be fun.
billfruit 7y ago
Not exactly the same thing, but 'Wallpaper Engine' is very highly rated on Steam for its ability to create highly customized 2d/3d live wallpapers for Windows PC's.
mwcampbell 7y ago
I didn't realize that implementing a screen saver for Mac back then required such low-level hacking. I guess that shouldn't be surprising, if the OS didn't have built-in support for screen savers. The interview briefly mentions that the same company, Berkeley Systems, developed a screen magnifier for people with low vision. They also developed a screen reader, OutSpoken [1], for blind people. Utilities like those also required low-level hacking. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OutSpoken https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OutSpoken
DonHopkins 7y ago
Another mesmerizing screen saver is Electric Sheep, which just keeps getting better and better over time, as it evolves in response to user's feedback: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17861723 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17861723 Electric Sheep is generative crowdsourced evolutionary art that enables viewers to vote for their favorite "sheep" animations to send them off to the pasture to breed with other user's favorites with genetic cross-over and mutation. So it just gets better and better, in response to what people actually enjoy! https://electricsheep.org/#/about https://electricsheep.org/#/about http://scottdraves.com/sheep.html http://scottdraves.com/sheep.html http://scottdraves.com/flame.html http://scottdraves.com/flame.html http://flam3.com/ http://flam3.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20050425102606/http://flam3.com/flame.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20050425102606/http://flam3.com/... Once I fell asleep while watching Star Trek Deep Space 9 on Netflix, and then half woke up after the Electric Sheep screen saver has kicked back in but I didn't realize it, so my brain struggled for several minutes trying to make sense of the never-ending wormhole sequence that I though was an out-of-control shuttlecraft lost in space! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15668253 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15668253 I have spent so many hours staring at Electric Sheep, thinking and wondering about how it works, that I finally looked it up, and found the papers about it! It took less time to read the papers than it took to stare at the screen all day tripping out and wondering, but I like to do both. The Flame Algorithm Flames are algorithmically generated images and animations. The software was originally written in 1992 and released as open source, aka free software. Over the years it has been greatly expanded, and is now widely used to create art and special effects. The shape and color of each image is specified by a long string of numbers - a genetic code of sorts. http://flam3.com/ http://flam3.com/ The Fractal Flame Algorithm https://web.archive.org/web/20050425102606/http://flam3.com/flame.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20050425102606/http://flam3.com/... Evolution and Collective Intelligence of the Electric Sheep http://draves.org/aoae07/draves-aoae07.pdf http://draves.org/aoae07/draves-aoae07.pdf The Electric Sheep and their Dreams in High Fidelity http://draves.org/npar06/npar06draves.pdf http://draves.org/npar06/npar06draves.pdf infinite evolving crowdsourced artwork https://github.com/scottdraves/electricsheep https://github.com/scottdraves/electricsheep Copyright Spotworks LLC GPL2 Licensed see https://github.com/scottdraves/electricsheep/blob/master/client_generic/COPYING https://github.com/scottdraves/electricsheep/blob/master/cli... 2015.05 moved from code.google.com repo 2011.01.30 based on revision 1546 on sf.net The Electric Sheep is a cyborg mind. It harnesses the collective intelligence of 450,000 computers and people to create abstract art with mathematics and Darwinian evolution. The result is seamless, organic, and infinite. See also http://electricsheep.org http://electricsheep.org and http://scottdraves.com http://scottdraves.com . The rendering engine is a separate project at https://github.com/scottdraves/flam3 https://github.com/scottdraves/flam3
emcrazyone 7y ago
another screen saver was Johnny Castaway. Was an IT guy at a company in the late 90s and this screen saver was on many workstations where I worked. Was always intriguing to see what Johnny would be into next... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r10WuRo7c50 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r10WuRo7c50
- mattl 7y ago
  Special dates would do certain things. Occasionally he’d leave the island.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
smabie 7y ago
I had this screen saver when I was 12 maybe (15 years ago) in which these two armies would fight each other forever. Like infantry and tanks and helicopters would come out on each side and blow each other up. I’ve been trying to find it for a long time, does anyone know what it is? It ran on WinXP.

130 points by ecliptik 7y ago

dang 7y ago

A thread from 2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14900647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14900647 2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7702105 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7702105 A bit from 2010: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1338175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1338175 (These links are for the curious. Reposts are ok after a year or so: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

vhold 7y ago

Run a mac emulator to save your screen in your browser: https://archive.org/details/AfterDark2 https://archive.org/details/AfterDark2

DrTung 7y ago

Every time I opened a network share or similar "slow" device on Windows XP's File Explorer (alas not in Windows 7 or 10) I'm reminded of After Dark, since that sweeping flashlight (that goes left/right) is more or less exactly copied from Disney Mickey Mouse something/screensaver which was a clone of After Dark.

bitwize 7y ago

This program was so popular, references to it were made on Beverly Hills, 90210. When the "Peach Pit After Dark" nightclub opened, the wordmark above the nightclub entrance was the same as that of the screen saver After Dark. There was also a flying toaster on the door, and some of the disco lights had flying toaster stencil masks in front of them, projecting toasters onto the dancefloor. It was a very rare instance of a real-world computer culture reference appearing in something as aggressively pop culture as 90210.

mistersquid 7y ago

I have my own fond memories of After Dark, especially the Satori module. The colored whorls Satori produced were so aesthetically pleasing, and I do think part of its durability would be the “organic” quality of the render, a quality probably partly due to the excellence of After Dark’s randomization. Jack Eastman attributes quite a bit of After Dark’s success among the competition due to the team’s striving for high quality randomness: > The other thing we were careful to do was not to put the toasters on a track and repeat the show. Random numbers were always important from that point on. I had done Monte Carlo simulations in my physics work and knew how to produce random numbers in various distributions. I think that was an important idea – we had these little movies, but you couldn’t predict them. > Competitors didn’t have that insight. With After Dark you could just zone out and watch for a long time. Plus it was really a screen saver – it wouldn’t do to have images sitting in one place or in repeating patterns. [0] [0] https://lowendmac.com/2007/aggressively-stupid-the-story-behind-after-dark/ https://lowendmac.com/2007/aggressively-stupid-the-story-beh...

zweep 7y ago
Example of even how the most absurd successes often have nailed the important details really well.

pmarreck 7y ago

For *nix screensaver fans feeling nostalgic, there's an XScreensaver version for iOS, FYI

efreak 7y ago
XScreensaver is also available for Android, and likely for windows/Mac as well.

Ididntdothis 7y ago

I miss Lunatic Fringe. Simple enough to be learned quickly but interesting enough to not get bored.

randomfool 7y ago
Was reminded of this game while reading the article but was racking my brain to remember the name. Thanks for mentioning it, fond memories.

dundercoder 7y ago

Does an After Dark clone exist for the modern Mac?

mattl 7y ago
XScreenSaver includes a flying toaster screensaver.
Cenk 7y ago
Yes: http://en.infinisys.co.jp/product/flyingtoasters/index.shtml http://en.infinisys.co.jp/product/flyingtoasters/index.shtml It works fine on High Sierra but probably won’t on Catalina, you can download the trial version and give it a spin though.

thrower123 7y ago

Screen savers were such a fun thing, two decades ago. It feels like all of the fun has been crushed out of computing these days. Why so serious?

spicymaki 7y ago
I am starting think it is the money that strips all of the fun out of it. Most software developers are not developing for fun these days. They are interchangeable cogs developing CRUD for soulless corporations whilst praying not to be rifed in the next culling. It is hard to produce art in that environment.
mattl 7y ago
I still run XScreenSaver everywhere. Grab a copy from the website and compile it up.
kragen 7y ago
Part of the difficulty is that technical feasibility of the software is no longer as much of a limitation. Half the things in XScreenSaver or Future Crew's Unreal https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=InrGJ7C9B3s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=InrGJ7C9B3s were things it was really surprising to see on the screen of a computer in 1993, especially one that wasn't a $50000 SGI. But now pretty much anything you can see, you can record an HD video of, and your $100 hand computer is fast enough to play it back in real time. So there's no longer the wonder factor of "how is this even possible? Am I dreaming?". Except sometimes there is. Like with Deep Dream. Or GPT-2. Or the Looking Glass light field display. Or GauGAN. Or a lot of math things. Or topology optimization. Or Wikipedia. But I do think it's a constant danger, forgetting that this stuff is supposed to be fun.

billfruit 7y ago

Not exactly the same thing, but 'Wallpaper Engine' is very highly rated on Steam for its ability to create highly customized 2d/3d live wallpapers for Windows PC's.

mwcampbell 7y ago

I didn't realize that implementing a screen saver for Mac back then required such low-level hacking. I guess that shouldn't be surprising, if the OS didn't have built-in support for screen savers. The interview briefly mentions that the same company, Berkeley Systems, developed a screen magnifier for people with low vision. They also developed a screen reader, OutSpoken [1], for blind people. Utilities like those also required low-level hacking. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OutSpoken https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OutSpoken

DonHopkins 7y ago

Another mesmerizing screen saver is Electric Sheep, which just keeps getting better and better over time, as it evolves in response to user's feedback: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17861723 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17861723 Electric Sheep is generative crowdsourced evolutionary art that enables viewers to vote for their favorite "sheep" animations to send them off to the pasture to breed with other user's favorites with genetic cross-over and mutation. So it just gets better and better, in response to what people actually enjoy! https://electricsheep.org/#/about https://electricsheep.org/#/about http://scottdraves.com/sheep.html http://scottdraves.com/sheep.html http://scottdraves.com/flame.html http://scottdraves.com/flame.html http://flam3.com/ http://flam3.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20050425102606/http://flam3.com/flame.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20050425102606/http://flam3.com/... Once I fell asleep while watching Star Trek Deep Space 9 on Netflix, and then half woke up after the Electric Sheep screen saver has kicked back in but I didn't realize it, so my brain struggled for several minutes trying to make sense of the never-ending wormhole sequence that I though was an out-of-control shuttlecraft lost in space! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15668253 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15668253 I have spent so many hours staring at Electric Sheep, thinking and wondering about how it works, that I finally looked it up, and found the papers about it! It took less time to read the papers than it took to stare at the screen all day tripping out and wondering, but I like to do both. The Flame Algorithm Flames are algorithmically generated images and animations. The software was originally written in 1992 and released as open source, aka free software. Over the years it has been greatly expanded, and is now widely used to create art and special effects. The shape and color of each image is specified by a long string of numbers - a genetic code of sorts. http://flam3.com/ http://flam3.com/ The Fractal Flame Algorithm https://web.archive.org/web/20050425102606/http://flam3.com/flame.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20050425102606/http://flam3.com/... Evolution and Collective Intelligence of the Electric Sheep http://draves.org/aoae07/draves-aoae07.pdf http://draves.org/aoae07/draves-aoae07.pdf The Electric Sheep and their Dreams in High Fidelity http://draves.org/npar06/npar06draves.pdf http://draves.org/npar06/npar06draves.pdf infinite evolving crowdsourced artwork https://github.com/scottdraves/electricsheep https://github.com/scottdraves/electricsheep Copyright Spotworks LLC GPL2 Licensed see https://github.com/scottdraves/electricsheep/blob/master/client_generic/COPYING https://github.com/scottdraves/electricsheep/blob/master/cli... 2015.05 moved from code.google.com repo 2011.01.30 based on revision 1546 on sf.net The Electric Sheep is a cyborg mind. It harnesses the collective intelligence of 450,000 computers and people to create abstract art with mathematics and Darwinian evolution. The result is seamless, organic, and infinite. See also http://electricsheep.org http://electricsheep.org and http://scottdraves.com http://scottdraves.com . The rendering engine is a separate project at https://github.com/scottdraves/flam3 https://github.com/scottdraves/flam3

emcrazyone 7y ago

another screen saver was Johnny Castaway. Was an IT guy at a company in the late 90s and this screen saver was on many workstations where I worked. Was always intriguing to see what Johnny would be into next... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r10WuRo7c50 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r10WuRo7c50

mattl 7y ago
Special dates would do certain things. Occasionally he’d leave the island.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

smabie 7y ago

I had this screen saver when I was 12 maybe (15 years ago) in which these two armies would fight each other forever. Like infantry and tanks and helicopters would come out on each side and blow each other up. I’ve been trying to find it for a long time, does anyone know what it is? It ran on WinXP.