Christmas greetings from Oxford Computer Group. To follow last year's Advent Calendar, we have written a new Christmassy screen saver. It is accompanied by some Christmassy icons, animated cursors and wallpapers, as well as a very slightly improved version of last year's Advent Calendar screen saver.
This readme accompanies the second release of the files, 4th December 1995. See the change notes later for more information.
This readme is written to accompany both the disk-based and "download-based" distribtion of the files. On the disk there are two files, this readme file (README.TXT) and the archive file XMAS95.EXE. The archive file contains the rest of the files, and, for the benefit of people who download it, it also contains this readme file.
File List (archive file contents)
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XMAS95.SCR Christmas Card Screen Saver, new for 1995.
No other files are required to run it.
Quick install: extract XMAS95.SCR from XMAS95.EXE by
running the command "A:XMAS95 XMAS95.SCR" (this assumes
that your XMAS95.EXE program is on a floppy disk in
drive A:). The file XMAS95.SCR will be created in the
current directory. Either make the Windows directory the
current directory before running the command, or move
the file to the Windows directory afterwards, then
select it as for any other screen saver. Note that
approximately 5MB disk space is required for XMAS95.SCR.
ADVENT94.SCR Advent Screen Saver, this is re-released from last year.
No other files required to run it.
Animations for your Cursor (Windows 95 & Windows NT only):
Xmas 95 is a sort of Christmas card screen saver. It is designed to display a series of changing events during the run up to Christmas and on into the New Year (up until 12th night). Events that happen on specific days (such as putting out mince pies for Father Christmas) have been "stretched" to ensure that they occur during the working week.
ADVENT94.scr
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This is more like a traditional Advent Calendar, with animated scenes behind the windows. Nothing extra happens after December 24th.
Disclaimer
----------
The Xmas 95 programs are intended a bit of Xmas fun. They have been developed quite quickly by our staff mostly in their spare time. The programs have not been rigorously tested. Oxford Computer Group makes no direct or implied suggestion as to the suitability of these files for any purpose. Oxford Computer Group Ltd accepts no liability for any loss or damages resulting from the use of these files. If you are not happy with these conditions - do not load the files.
System Requirements
-------------------
XMAS95.SCR uses quite a lot of system resources - but we couldnÆt do it any other way. You should not use any important files until you are sure that any applications you are using will run successfully with the saver installed. On slower machines (e.g. 386s) animations may not run smoothly. If you notice that graphics start to partially or fully disappear, this may imply that there is a memory resource problem (or a bug of course). Please try restarting Windows.
The XMAS95 screen saver works best in SVGA 256 colour mode (it also works at higher colour depths, but correspondingly more memory and CPU power will be needed for no gain in display quality). This version will also run on 16 colour displays, but considerable CPU time is used by the colour dithering algorithims. The dithered output looks quite good from a few feet away, but it is not designed for close up viewing.
As a reference, the XMAS95.SCR clock pendulum is designed to take 1 second to travel from one side to the other, (though the pendulum can pause noticeably when large animations are loaded from a slow file system).
The XMAS95 saver is designed to work at 800x600 and 640x480 resolutions (the room is a bit smaller in the latter). At higher resolutions you will see black space around the edges.
Both savers are supplied as 16-bit programs tested for Windows, Windows 95 and Windows NT.
True Saver Mode
---------------
The XMAS95 Screen Saver has a "true screen saver mode". This can be enabled on the config dialogue. Except under Windows NT, return to the "ordinary saver" from the "true saver" by moving the mouse. A keyboard press will cancel the screen saver in either mode. If selected, the true saver mode starts after 10 minutes.
Passwords
---------
When running under Windows 95, it is possible to kill the screen saver from the task list. Thus the inbuilt password protection is not reliable.
When running under Windows NT, the password may be set, and is then required to exit "Test" mode, but is not meaningful during ordinary operation. You can still use the Windows NT Security dialog to Lock the workstation.
[As this is a 16 bit application, Windows 95 and NT do not offer you the option of using the "system" password protection.]
Note that passwords set for screen savers could be cicumvented by someone who has access to your computer. The XMAS95 password is not common to other screen savers (which is the norm).
32 Bit Versions
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If we produce a 32-bit version of the XMAS95 screen saver, it will be made available from the WWW pages (see below).
Installation
============
File Extraction
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All files are supplied in the form of a self-extracting PKZIP compressed archive (XMAS95.EXE). From an MSDOS-type prompt just run this executable to create the files it contains (either do this in your Windows directory, or in a temporary and/or empty directory so that you will be able to delete the files afterwards). The decompressed screen savers (*.SCR) and all the other files should be placed in your Windows directory (c:\Windows, c:\WINNT, c:\WIN95 etc.) or in the system sub-directory of this directory.
The following example commands show a method of directly placing the
supplied files in the directory "\WINDOWS" on dirve "C:", it assumes that the XMAS95.EXE file is on a floppy disk in drive A:
a:xmas95 c:\windows
The following example will place just the two screen saver programs in the directory "\WIN95" on drive "C:", it also assumes the original file is in A:
a:xmas95 c:\win95 *.scr
If any files already exist, you will be asked if you want to overwrite them.
The archive file is not required after you have extracted the files that you need from it. But you may wish to keep it to pass on to your friends.
Screen Savers
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Once the files are in place, the screen savers can be activated from the control panel (desktop for Windows and Windows NT or display properties dialog for Windows 95). For XMAS95.SCR Look for either the name "Xmas95 OCG" (Windows 3.1x), "Xmas95 OCG (16-bit)" (Windows NT), or just "Xmas95" (Windows 95). For ADVENT94.SCR look for either the name "Advent Calendar-94 OCG" (Windows 3
