These textures started it all. One day back in November of 1991, Steve came over to have some fun with my new Macintosh, and decided that the pattern I had chosen was much too boring. He used the General Controls Control Panel to create a more interesting pattern, included in these textures as ‘Blue Moire.’ Later, he brought another 8x8 pattern that later became the background for ‘Flys on the Windscreen.’ He originally created both of these patterns on a Mac Classic.
Still later, he started bringing more interesting patterns that he had created within ResEdit, and I copied some of them into my System File. The early ones included ‘Flys on the Windscreen,’ ‘Space.... The Final Frontier,’ and ‘ResEdit Mess-Wit'-Yo-Eyes Tiles.’ The next batch he brought include the first 15 or so texture included in Textures Volume I.
I decided that we had to distribute these patterns to the network, but I didn't want everyone to have to use ResEdit to edit their System files. We also wanted them to be called “Textures,” not “patterns.” So I wrote the very first Desktop Textures hack, Desktop Textures 1.0. With this encouragement, Steve created the rest of the textures which became Volume I, with the decision to continue the project with Volume II. Little did we know we'd get to Volume III, or beyond!
TEXTURES VOLUME II
Soon after Volume I was released, I began work on a newer version of the Desktop Textures Installer. I just started pumping features into it. The single most important feature was the texture-creation ability. I created many textures in the process of testing the new program, and later Steve finished the Volume II set with some excellent new textures created using the new Installer.
I (Geoff) created the first several textures with several programs and considerable hand-editing. They are:
Grey Lumpy Table Cloth
Sandy Ridges
Water Waves
Grey Sea Floor
Sheets of Pink Flame
Medium Slate
The rest of the textures were created by Steve, using an impressive barrage of programs and more hand editing than I care to think about often. They are:
Dark Fiery Rings
Tiger Static
Edge of the Deep Green Sea
Edge of the Deep Green Sea 2
Purple Haze Maze
Mazes in the Mist
Ghostly Maze
Cammo
HoneyComb
Rolling Blue Waves Stare-E-O
Purple Zag War Stare-E-O
TEXTURES VOLUME III
The textures in this volume followed the trend of increasing creation time. A handful of them (like ‘Space – The Next Generation’) were comparatively easy to create, and Steve was able to kick them out in a few hours. Others “just sort of happened” as he learned and experimented with new techniques. A few, however, were planned from the start and took days to complete. The prime example is ‘Marble Jewel Tiles’. In general, the driving factor in his creative process was to move away from the techniques used in Volume II.
I followed Steve's example when I created some of my textures (read: I stole his techniques). Some of the others, however, used original thoughts on my part. ‘Big Speaker Grille’ is an actual photograph of one of my KLH stereo speakers. It took a lot of manipulation to make it repeat. Then I air-brushed out some flaws that add character to my speakers but would make the pattern too repetitive.
We were going to create more scanned-photo textures, but we never got around to it. We should have some more ready by the next release…
In any event, here's the breakdown of authorship:
Steve's Textures:
Gothic Toothpaste
Grey Marble
Static Plasma
CyberMesh
Striated Kittens
Gold Molecules
Marble Jewel Tiles
River
Cracks in the Ice
Black Marble
Million Lakes
CyberMesh (lower)
Speed O' Light
Hive
Space – The Next Generation
Smooth Grey Stare-E-O
Funky Overlap
Geoff's Textures:
Bit Packets
The Thinker
Big Speaker Grille
Stratospheric Rider
Bow Tiles
Jade Stepping Stones
Pollen (to which, by the way, I am allergic)
Mini Bows
Watery Rings was a joint effort. Steve made the rings, and wanted to do something with them. I just slapped the watery texture onto them, and we never bothered doing anything more with it, so that's what you've got.
VOLUME III 16/32-BIT SUPPLEMENT
In the course of creating textures, we've made many that look too grainy for our tastes in 8-bit or lower display modes. I then went out and bought enough VRAM to have a 32 bit video display, and it turns out that creating textures can be easier this way. In any event, it turns out that these otherwise grainy textures look just perfect with 32-bit video (and should look pretty good with 16 bits), and since there are those out there fortunate enough to have this capability, we're including a few of these impressively smooth textures.
These textures will of course work perfectly even without 16- or 32-bit monitors, but they are fairly grainy. There's something to be said for the graininess, though. Some would argue that it provides even more texture... On black-and-white systems, these patterns will look as good as or better than many of the other textures. Of course, dithering millions of colors to black and white will provide the extreme in graininess, but it doesn't actually look all that bad.
YOU WANT MORE?
Look for Volume IV, including even more exciting textures! We also have some friends who are busy making textures using our suite of programs, and these will be posted all over the place when they are done. Look for the following files:
Allon's Textures
Michael Wilson's Textures
CLOSING STATEMENT FROM THE AUTHOR (YES, THIS HEADING IS LONGER THAN ITS CONTENT)
Enjoy!
- Geoff
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The textures included in this product are owned by Avernus, and Avernus reserves all rights to their distribution. Do not redistribute them in any form other than as the Desktop Textures Suite without specific permission from Avernus.
