Continued:

   
  DK:

Through enthusiasm of your quite remarkable screen savers, there have been some porting of your stuff to Linux, and Mac OS X. Of course since you provide the source code of your ss works on the webpage, did you think that it would be as popular as it seems to be? And thinking about it, you can program in Linux, why don’t you port your own stuff? Since it’s your code, you should have a better understanding of it than someone else having to figure out your programming style. To quote you, “Some of this code is pretty nice stuff, and some is scattered and horribly esoteric. It's mostly because I wrote my savers as art projects instead of programming projects (no planning ahead whatsoever). If you like a little magic math, you'll love this code. It has more mysterious, poorly commented vector algebra that you can imagine. Enjoy.”



  TW:

The source code got the reaction that I was hoping for, and other developers did a lot of nice porting.

Laziness is mainly what stops me from doing my own ports. Right now I have a Windows code base that I understand quite well, so it's easy to make new savers in Windows. Making my own Linux ports would mean learning how to write savers in Linux, which is something I simply haven't felt like doing. For this next release I am starting a SourceForge project so that it will be easier to build in support for other platforms. I hope to recruit some other developers to help me with this task. It would be much simpler to have all the code in one distribution that compiles on multiple platforms than to have people porting all the time.



  DK:


I notice you are upgrading your old screen savers to support dual monitors, a few optimizations, that sort of thing. Any time frame on getting them all done, or is it more like, “When it’s done” thing.



  TW:

Just a few more days I think. Maybe even before we finish this interview. I have fixed all the bugs that I have been able to duplicate on my home computer. Now I am just cleaning up code and doing some final testing.

The hardest part about programming multiple monitor support is that I only have one monitor at home. For years, people were writing and asking for this feature. I always responded with "I have no way to implement it. Why don't you program it and send me the code?" Well, a couple people finally sent me some code tidbits, so I added it to my saver library and debugged it with the help of some friendly beta testers. (Update: Done and ready for download. ~David)



  DK:

I think we’re pretty close to wrapping this up, but please tell us if you can, without making most of us feel mentally challenged, more about your new ss, Hyperspace. And come to think of it, it’s been a very long time since you released a new ss. When was that again?


  TW:

Helios version 1.0 was released on January 13, 2001. Has it been that long? Wow, I really have been lazy.

Hyperspace is my stab at the starfield simulation genre. Over the years I have seen three ways to zoom through space on computer screens that I really liked: through stars, between two parallel planes, and through a tunnel. The way I saw it, the next logical step was to motion-blur the stars, make the planes ooze together like liquid, make the tunnel ripple and bend, use many polygons to make everything appear organic instead of blocky, and light it all up with animated textures and shaders. I programmed most of Hyperspace in 2001 and released an alpha version that some of your readers may have seen, but computers were not fast enough to run it at a decent frame rate. So I put it on the back burner for a few years and finished it up recently.



  DK:


I’d like to thank you for your time Terry. I found it interesting to probe a bit more into your world. I hope the readers do as well. Is there anything you would like to add? Perhaps something that we didn’t explore here, or…


  TW:

Thank you, David. That was my very first email interview. I guess the only thing left to say is that I hope everyone out there enjoys Hyperspace and the new versions of the older screensavers. Just wait until you see the next one. I already know what it will be like, but I need to make time to program it.



Closing - Screen Savers Pictures and Download Link:

    Please note that I compressed the pictures a little more than the higher quality ones you can see at Really Slick Screensavers, to save some of my bandwidth. So there is a bit of color loss on some, and some slight image degradation on the jpg files. Please click the thumbnails for larger pictures as per usual. If you think they look cool now, just wait till you see them in action! Terry just released his latest screen saver "Hyperspace" Yesterday. So if you want them, go right here to the Downloads Page at Really Slick Screensavers. Enjoy!

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