Strange Company's StrangeSaver was originally designed to run recorded games from First-Person Perspective Shooter games like Quake, QUake II and Half-Life. It has since been extended to run both these "demos" and any executable as a screensaver.
Installation:
1) Unzip the file "Strangesaver.scr"into your Windows directory.
2) If you intend to use Quake 2, copy the "loop.dm2" file into your quake2\baseq2\demos directory.
3) Go to your Display Properties in Win95/98 and install Strangesaver from the options list. Hit "Settings" and fill in the settings there.
4) If you intend to use Quake 3: Arena or the Q3A Test, rename your "demoq3" directory to "baseq3" if you haven't already done so.
5) The StrangeSaver should now work.
6) Once the StrangeSaver has run up as a screensaver, you must close the executable it runs, then click "Close" on the dialog bog it brings up to shut it down.
Supported Games:
The StrangeSaver can only run one game at a time. Currently, the following games are fully supported:
- Quake, Quake II, Quake III Arena Test, Half-Life, SIN, Heretic II
If you want to run Unreal flybys as a screensaver, you can use the StrangeSaver Unreal Minisaver, which should have been distributed with this release.
In addition, the StrangeSaver can run any executable as a screensaver. This is primarily designed to allow users to run graphical "demos" as screensavers, but any executable will run up if selected.
Yes, you can run Word as your screensaver if you want...
About the StrangeSaver
If you find any bugs, please report them to nomad@strangecompany.org. This is version 2.98: version 3 will have support for Quake III Arnea and Unreal Tournament retail versions.
Notes:
- If the same demo is listed more than once, it will only be played once.
- For all games other than Quake 2, the demos must all be in the same game directory (ctf, teamfortress, whatever). Quake 2 can play demos from both that folder and the baseq2 folder in a single session.
- The Quake II series (Quake 2, Heretic 2, SIN) crash if two successive demos are both on the same map. That's ID's fault, not ours...
- Heretic 2 will also Black Screen Of Death if asked to play a non-existent demo.
- If you try to run the StrangeSaver without having run "settings", it will crash.
Revision History:
Version 2.98: Re-written to allow any executable to be used as a saver.
Version 2.5: Added multiple demo select, support for Heretic II. Yet more tidying and bugfixes.
Version 2.0: Added multiple demo support, support for SIN, Kingpin, Q3A. More tidying.
Version 1.5: Test version, released as Unreal Minisaver.
Version 1.3: Internal only, tidied up configuration, condensed into one file.
version 1.0: Current version. Added user customisability, Quake and Half-Life support.
Version 0.9 Beta version
Future Plans:
- Quitting as a normal screensaver: even harder than we thought. See http://www.strangecompany.org/ for details.
- StarSiege, StarSiege: Tribes, DooM, DooM II, Heretic, Hexen II, Daikatana, Unreal and Unreal tournament support: all awaiting further research. If anyone can tell us anything about demo playback in those games, email us.
Credits:
StrangeSaver programming: Hugh Hancock
StrangeSaver bugfix and QA: Gordon McDonald, James Payne, Neal Corbett, Bradley Law, Dan Jackson, Alex Compton George Williamson,
StrangeSaver and NiSplit demo copyright 1999 Strange Company.
