14 .TH XScreenSaver 1 "14-Dec-95" "X Version 11"
16 bubbles - frying pan / soft drink simulation
19 [\-display \fIhost:display.screen\fP] [\-foreground \fIcolor\fP] [\-background \fIcolor\fP] [\-window] [\-root] [\-mono] [\-install] [\-visual \fIvisual\fP] [\-simple] [\-broken] [\-3D] [\-rise|\-drop] [-trails]
22 \fIBubbles\fP sprays lots of little random bubbles all over the window which
23 then grow until they reach their maximum size and go pop. The inspiration
24 for this was watching little globules of oil on the bottom of a frying pan
25 and it also looks a little like bubbles in fizzy soft drink. The default
26 mode uses fancy ray-traced bubbles but there is also a mode which just draws
27 circles in case the default mode is too taxing on your hardware.
31 was compiled, it accepts the following options:
34 Colour of circles if \fI\-simple\fP mode is selected.
37 Colour of window background.
40 Draw on a newly-created window. This is the default.
43 Draw on the root window.
46 If on a color display, pretend we're on a monochrome display.
49 Install a private colormap for the window.
51 .B \-visual \fIvisual\fP
52 Specify which visual to use. Legal values are the name of a visual class,
53 or the id number (decimal or hex) of a specific visual.
55 .B \-delay microseconds
56 How much of a delay should be introduced between steps of the animation.
57 Default 800, or about 800 microsecond. Actually, this is the delay between each
58 group of 15 new bubbles since such a delay between each step results in a
59 very slow animation rate.
62 Same as \fI\-delay 0\fP.
65 Don't use the default fancy pixmap bubbles. Just draw circles instead.
66 This may give more bearable performance if your hardware wasn't made for
70 Don't hide bubbles when they pop. This was a bug during development
71 but the results were actually quite attractive.
74 Normally, the simulation is done completely in two dimensions. When a
75 bubble swallows up another bubble, the areas of each are added to get
76 the area of the resulting bubble. This option changes the algorithm
77 to instead add volume (imagining each to be a sphere in 3D space). The
78 whole thing looks more realistic but I find it attracts attention to
79 the flickering of each bubble as they are move and are redrawn. Your
83 Don't print messages explaining why one or several command line options
84 were ignored. This is disabled by default.
91 Display the current frame rate and CPU load.
93 If you find the pace of things too slow, remember that there is a delay
94 even though you specify no \fI\-delay\fP option. Try using \fI\-nodelay\fP
95 although beware of the effects of irritation of other users if you're on a
96 shared system as you bleed their CPU time away.
98 Some tools to assist in creation of new bubbles are included in the source
99 distribution. These can either be loaded with the \fI\-file\fP or
100 \fI\-directory\fP options (if available) or they can be used in place
101 of the distributed default bubble (bubble_default.c).
102 You might like to copy these scripts to a permanent location and
103 use them. Read bubbles.README.
105 Rendered bubbles are not supported on monochrome displays. I'm not
106 convinced that small bubbles, even dithered properly are going to look
107 like anything more than a jumble of random dots.
109 There is a delay before something appears on the screen when using
110 rendered bubbles. The XPM library seems to take a \fBlong\fP time to make
111 pixmaps out of raw data. This can be irritating on slower systems.
113 The movement of the bubbles looks jerky if an incomplete set of bubbles
116 The hide/display algorithm could do with some work to avoid flickering
117 when \fI\-nodelay\fP is set.
122 to get the default host and display number.
125 to get the name of a resource file that overrides the global resources
126 stored in the RESOURCE_MANAGER property.
130 .SH DISTRIBUTION POLICY
131 This work is Copyright \(co 1995, 1996 by James Macnicol. Permission
132 to use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell this software and its
133 documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided
134 that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that
135 copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting
136 documentation. No representations are made about the suitability of
137 this software for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express
140 James Macnicol <james.macnicol@mailexcite.com>