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Afterglow: Run classic After Dark screen savers on modern macOS

48 points by NaOH 21 hours ago | 18 comments

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.

orangecat 57 minutes ago

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

cyanydeez 45 minutes 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 14 minutes ago

it was `zmodem`:

https://b0b.com/ZMODEM.TXT

reaperducer 2 hours ago

I need the Star Trek modules

They're there. Installable from within the program.

dallen33 25 minutes 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.

CodeWriter23 18 minutes 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.

pogue 13 hours ago

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 10 minutes ago

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

dylan604 3 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 57 minutes 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.

schoen 42 minutes 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 35 minutes 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!

CaliforniaKarl 49 minutes ago

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

dylan604 45 minutes ago

yes, although the I recently tried doing this on a cloud Ubuntu instance, and it refused to see the .so file

Scramblejams 2 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 2 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 51 minutes 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