Sick of the bugs in your computer? Want to send them on a Sisyphean task? Download this screensaver and put them to work. These bugs hate disorder, and will spend their lives organizing dots on your screen. Just when they think they're finished, the dots scatter again.

Special thanks go to Jeff Lander for his articles in Game Developer magazine.

Download: The Spiders Screen Saver is zipped up here: SpidersSaver.zip (About 45 KB).

Requirements: Windows 95/98/NT/2000/Me/XP

Instructions: Extract the file "SpidersSaver.scr" into your Windows directory. It'll then become your currently selected screensaver.

Features:

• Version 1.4: Added faster refresh rate (smoother spider animation), and fixed unwanted spider zig-zagging. (An atan() wrap problem.)
• Version 1.3: Added this url to the settings dialog, an installer, and a better readme.txt document.
• Version 1.2: Added a very pleasing critical-mass jitter to the stacks of balls right before they explode.
• Version 1.1: The last bug caught and squashed. (A very rare null-dereference.) More customizable options, and a couple of speed optimizations.
• Version 1.0.0.3: Smarter harvesting, better ball stacking, and multi-sized spiders.
• Version 1.0.0.2: Added multi-sized balls.
• Version 1.0.0.1: Fixed a bug which only occured in the control panel's preview window. (An infinite loop.)
• Technologies used: Inverse Kinematics, Forward Kinetics, lean hierarchical Bone structure.
• The spiders have a range of eye sight of about three spider lengths. Their eyes track the target once spotted.

Home.