4 ms·

Your description plus the name makes me suspect the original program was rendering a variety of "hopalong fractals": https://jolinton.co.uk/Mathematics/Hopalong

Your description plus the name makes me suspect the original program was rendering a variety of "hopalong fractals": https://jolinton.co.uk/Mathematics/Hopalong_Fractals/Text.pdf https://jolinton.co.uk/Mathematics/Hopalong_Fractals/Text.pd... I miss having a wide selection of screensavers on my Mac. Nobody's writing new ones that properly plug into the system screensaver framework, everything on the App Store is just a little program that wants to run in the background, almost all my old .savers quit working and the ones that do still work have terrible framerates, and the ability to cram a Quicktime composition into the savers directory is long gone. Having some bit of procedural art on my screen was just nice.

fogleman 2y ago
I just downloaded the screensaver pack mentioned by the OP and there's even another one in the pack called "Hopalong"!
- noduerme 2y ago
  OMG. I remember that. I did not put that together!
noduerme 2y ago
Hey, first of all, it's awesome to hear that. I miss screen savers and procedural animation so much... I mean, I used to zone out on them for hours, and try to write my own as a kid. It was a lot of fun. I realize the world has no need for them anymore, but I still like them. I'm not sure how we got to a point where there's only one basic screen saver for the Mac and it's almost impossible to find anything else. I hadn't heard of hopalong fractals, but this code implements something very similar. Conceptually, if you scan the whole image space at each iteration and, for each lit pixel you light up another random pixel at half the brightness within a certain radius, things will begin to trend in one direction. Because if the first one you light happens to be off to the left, then there's double the probability that the next will be at least that far to the left, and then the leftward spread becomes exponentially more likely in the following iterations. I haven't actually encountered spiral arms in this, but maybe following hopalongs will be my next saver ;) There's a lot you can do with a little code here. You can warp the space you want to light up, or over/under light certain things, re-amplify, or run a fader on the entire screen in a few bytes. The possibilities are endless. But it's kind of like...how do I make a thing that looks like that? The fun part, for me, of making a screen saver or any procedural art is cooking with very few ingredients and lots of limitations.
self 2y ago
> I miss having a wide selection of screensavers on my Mac. i've used https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/ https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/ for over a decade on macos (currently on 15.3).
- thinkingtoilet 2y ago
  Uh... that link has an interesting redirect.
  - petepete 2y ago
    I know what's coming and it still makes me laugh every time.
    - self 2y ago
      In my defense, I'd read about it on his blog, but years ago. I'd completely forgotten about it. Oh well.
- IncreasePosts 2y ago
  You can't link to Jwz directly from hn, because jwz is a man-child https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/ https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...
  - mig39 2y ago
    That's weird, the site loads fine for me (macOS with Safari). Is it supposed to redirect elsewhere if it's clicked on hacker news? Edit: I tried it on Firefox and Chrome, and it does indeed redirect to that ... image. But it doesn't do so with Safari (latest version, latest macOS). What is Safari doing differently? Not passing along the referrer?
    - jamie_ca 2y ago
      If your HTTP referer is HN, it redirects to https://cdn.jwz.org/images/2024/hn.png https://cdn.jwz.org/images/2024/hn.png
rezmason 2y ago
The Mac screensaver ecosystem's going through some interesting shifts in recent years. The permissions and stated capabilities of 3rd party software are much more delineated now, but screensaver modules are architected in an old NeXTSTEP kind of way, where software you trust loads and runs software you don't. It's not visible to end users, but nowadays, Apple-authored screensavers use a private framework, and 3rd party screensavers use the traditional framework. Sometimes the traditional framework hiccups. Because these aren't essential programs, presumably they are lower priority, so it may be a while before things settle: https://github.com/AerialScreensaver/ScreenSaverMinimal?tab=readme-ov-file https://github.com/AerialScreensaver/ScreenSaverMinimal?tab=... https://github.com/AerialScreensaver/ScreenSaverMinimal/wiki/Issues-with-macOS-Ventura-betas https://github.com/AerialScreensaver/ScreenSaverMinimal/wiki... Nevertheless, here are a few more contemporary offerings: https://github.com/agarrharr/awesome-macos-screensavers https://github.com/agarrharr/awesome-macos-screensavers And here's mine from last year! Got another one in the works. https://github.com/Rezmason/Iconic https://github.com/Rezmason/Iconic
- jimmydoe 2y ago
  Thank you for the list. I found the pong saver I was missing. Your saver looks cool too! Looking forward to your new one.
- mnky9800n 2y ago
  How do you learn this magic?
  - rezmason 2y ago
    It helps that other people struggled with this macOS Ventura era stuff out in the open, so when my QA tester (hi dad!) told me my screensaver was misbehaving in System Settings, the discourse came up in GitHub's search results. Oh— and when researching for Iconic, I dug up BackSpace for NeXTSTEP and learned how OS X's ScreenSaver.framework came about. Devs distributing modules they produced for other devs' projects was much more prevalent in the early nineties! SuperSolitaire II, for instance, accepted a ".solitaire" program module and shipped a separate set of varieties: https://ftp.nice.ch/pub/next/games/card/_SuperSolitaireModules.NIHS.b/SuperSolitaireModules/ https://ftp.nice.ch/pub/next/games/card/_SuperSolitaireModul...
spot 2y ago
i'm working on a new one :)
- DonHopkins 2y ago
  Steam Ram? Mechanical Ewe? Atomic Goat?
dexwiz 2y ago
Are these the same thing as strange attractors? I remember generating things that looked like this with a desktop program around 2005.

fogleman 2y ago

I just downloaded the screensaver pack mentioned by the OP and there's even another one in the pack called "Hopalong"!

noduerme 2y ago
OMG. I remember that. I did not put that together!

noduerme 2y ago

Hey, first of all, it's awesome to hear that. I miss screen savers and procedural animation so much... I mean, I used to zone out on them for hours, and try to write my own as a kid. It was a lot of fun. I realize the world has no need for them anymore, but I still like them. I'm not sure how we got to a point where there's only one basic screen saver for the Mac and it's almost impossible to find anything else. I hadn't heard of hopalong fractals, but this code implements something very similar. Conceptually, if you scan the whole image space at each iteration and, for each lit pixel you light up another random pixel at half the brightness within a certain radius, things will begin to trend in one direction. Because if the first one you light happens to be off to the left, then there's double the probability that the next will be at least that far to the left, and then the leftward spread becomes exponentially more likely in the following iterations. I haven't actually encountered spiral arms in this, but maybe following hopalongs will be my next saver ;) There's a lot you can do with a little code here. You can warp the space you want to light up, or over/under light certain things, re-amplify, or run a fader on the entire screen in a few bytes. The possibilities are endless. But it's kind of like...how do I make a thing that looks like that? The fun part, for me, of making a screen saver or any procedural art is cooking with very few ingredients and lots of limitations.

self 2y ago

> I miss having a wide selection of screensavers on my Mac. i've used https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/ https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/ for over a decade on macos (currently on 15.3).

thinkingtoilet 2y ago
Uh... that link has an interesting redirect.
- petepete 2y ago
  I know what's coming and it still makes me laugh every time.
  - self 2y ago
    In my defense, I'd read about it on his blog, but years ago. I'd completely forgotten about it. Oh well.
IncreasePosts 2y ago
You can't link to Jwz directly from hn, because jwz is a man-child https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/ https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...
- mig39 2y ago
  That's weird, the site loads fine for me (macOS with Safari). Is it supposed to redirect elsewhere if it's clicked on hacker news? Edit: I tried it on Firefox and Chrome, and it does indeed redirect to that ... image. But it doesn't do so with Safari (latest version, latest macOS). What is Safari doing differently? Not passing along the referrer?
  - jamie_ca 2y ago
    If your HTTP referer is HN, it redirects to https://cdn.jwz.org/images/2024/hn.png https://cdn.jwz.org/images/2024/hn.png

rezmason 2y ago

The Mac screensaver ecosystem's going through some interesting shifts in recent years. The permissions and stated capabilities of 3rd party software are much more delineated now, but screensaver modules are architected in an old NeXTSTEP kind of way, where software you trust loads and runs software you don't. It's not visible to end users, but nowadays, Apple-authored screensavers use a private framework, and 3rd party screensavers use the traditional framework. Sometimes the traditional framework hiccups. Because these aren't essential programs, presumably they are lower priority, so it may be a while before things settle: https://github.com/AerialScreensaver/ScreenSaverMinimal?tab=readme-ov-file https://github.com/AerialScreensaver/ScreenSaverMinimal?tab=... https://github.com/AerialScreensaver/ScreenSaverMinimal/wiki/Issues-with-macOS-Ventura-betas https://github.com/AerialScreensaver/ScreenSaverMinimal/wiki... Nevertheless, here are a few more contemporary offerings: https://github.com/agarrharr/awesome-macos-screensavers https://github.com/agarrharr/awesome-macos-screensavers And here's mine from last year! Got another one in the works. https://github.com/Rezmason/Iconic https://github.com/Rezmason/Iconic

jimmydoe 2y ago
Thank you for the list. I found the pong saver I was missing. Your saver looks cool too! Looking forward to your new one.
mnky9800n 2y ago
How do you learn this magic?
- rezmason 2y ago
  It helps that other people struggled with this macOS Ventura era stuff out in the open, so when my QA tester (hi dad!) told me my screensaver was misbehaving in System Settings, the discourse came up in GitHub's search results. Oh— and when researching for Iconic, I dug up BackSpace for NeXTSTEP and learned how OS X's ScreenSaver.framework came about. Devs distributing modules they produced for other devs' projects was much more prevalent in the early nineties! SuperSolitaire II, for instance, accepted a ".solitaire" program module and shipped a separate set of varieties: https://ftp.nice.ch/pub/next/games/card/_SuperSolitaireModules.NIHS.b/SuperSolitaireModules/ https://ftp.nice.ch/pub/next/games/card/_SuperSolitaireModul...

spot 2y ago

i'm working on a new one :)

DonHopkins 2y ago
Steam Ram? Mechanical Ewe? Atomic Goat?

dexwiz 2y ago

Are these the same thing as strange attractors? I remember generating things that looked like this with a desktop program around 2005.