Do you want to program your own screensaver?

You have come to the right place.  Making your own screensaver is easy, especially with an example screensaver Visual C++ project. That's exactly what we have for you here.

We have created an example screensaver that uses OpenGL graphics and draws colorful spheres all over the screen.


The great thing is, you can use this example code to make your own screensaver easily.  The tedius and annoying work of initializing the graphics and handling the Windows callback functions has already been done for you.  So if you don't care much about that, you don't have to worry about it, but if you do want to learn, all the code is there for you, and almost every line is commented to tell you exactly what is going on.

What you need

• Some programming knowledge (C or C++ is best, but any will do)
• A copy of Microsoft's Visual C++ (6.0 or a newer .NET version)
  
• You don't have a copy?  Don't despair, it can be easy and cheap to get one.
• Are you a student?
• You can get an academic version for free or less than $100.
• Search on the web for academic edition Visual C++
• Check ebay, too
• Do you just want to try it out?
• Some books come with a "lite" version of Visual C++
• Andre Lamothe's Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus comes with a stripped down version that works fine.
• Try one of Microsoft's beta versions.

Okay, I have Visual C++ and can program (at least a little)

Great!  Just download the example screensaver project, unzip it with Winzip or other zip utility, and open either the .dsp file or the .dsw in Visual C++.

The project consists of only one real source file, and then resources.  Go ahead and build the project.  The CoolSaver.scr will be built to either the Debug or Release directory just below the project files.  Copy this CoolSaver.scr into the Windows system directory (depending on whether you have XP or 9x, it is in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 or something similar).  Now go to the display settings from Control Panel and select the CoolSaver screensaver.  Preview and watch it work!

Click the settings button on the display dialog and you will get a window pop up that allows you to set parameters.  These don't actually do anything, but if you want to you can modify these parameters to fit your own screensaver and then customize the graphics depending on what the user selected.

If you can understand all the code on your own, then you're up and running with a great start for your own screensaver.  However, if you would like a few more pointers then read on for in-depth analysis of the screensaver example project.

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