XScreenSaver is a screen saver and locker for the X window system by Jamie Zawinski. There are more than 180 screen savers in the original package. This release of the wrapper makes it possible to use the ones following the screenhack api as FreeFrame plugins. This means 80+ plugins.

This is a preliminary release of the wrapper with 20 ported screen saver. The following source plugins were converted: Anemone, Barcode, Cynosure, Deco, Flame, Greynetic, Hyperball, Hypercube, Kaleidascope, Kumppa, Mismunch, Munch, Pedal, Pong, Pyro, XAnalogTV, XMatrix. Some of the plugins are ported as filters. These are DecayScreen, FuzzyFlakes and Jigsaw.

Some of the more interesing plugins:

XAnalogTV
Shows a detailed simulation of an old tv set showing various test patters, with various picture artifacts like snow, bloom, distortion, ghosting, and hash noise. It also simulates the tv warming up. It will cycle through 12 channels, some with images you give it, and some with color bars or nothing but static.

Flame
IFS based fractal generator, the ancestor of electric sheep.

Pong
Simulates an ancient pong home video game, as well as various artifacts from displaying it on a color tv set. The plugin version is playable by one or two players.

Check out the other ones with screenshots here:
http://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/screenshots.html

Screenshots

There are more than 60 screen savers that haven't been ported yet. The ones ported don't always provide the same functionality as the screen savers, sometimes more, but usually less parameters can be changed. The work is quite automatic and simple, but it takes some time. The rest of the screensavers is following an other api.

The plugin wrapper is more like a proof of concept at the moment. It works but there can be problems when using multiple instances or reinitialising the plugins.

There is no Windows port of the package at the moment of writing, but hopefully someone is working on it. Check the following vjforum thread for details.

Download xscrplugins_041230.tar.gz