Paintball Screensaver        
 Remco de Korte - 2000/2002

version 2.0

Short Info
----------

Paintball paints a picture on your screen
using balls in an impressionistic style.
When the painting is finished Paintball
starts on a new image.

The original version (1.x) was picked up 
by a couple of people who expected guns
and paint splattering action. Naturally
they were disappointed. For those people
(but not just for those) Paintball is now
"enhanced" with a new option, Paint Mode,
which allows you to switch from the
bouncing balls to... splattering paint.

To run Paintball you'll need Win95, Win98,
WinNT or Win2000, WinME or WinXP.

Paintball.exe will install the screensaver
to a directory of your choice. Run this
program again to uninstall the saver.


Options
-------

Image(s):
  choose which image you want painted.
  Default - paints one of five pictures
  	    that come with the saver
  Desktop - paints a picture of your
	    desktop on the canvas	
  Load	  - lets you pick images from
	    your own collection. 
	    Supported filetypes are BMP
            and JPG.
            The saver will pick a random
            image from your list.
  When you create a list of your own
  images you have the option to stretch 
  the images to fill the screen or scale
  them and add black margins.
  
Paint Mode:
  Bounce - the picture is painted by the 
           traditional bouncing balls.
  Splat! - the picture is painted by
           blots of coloured "paint".
  Random - randomly picks one of the
           two modes.         
           
     
Number of balls:
  You can have up to 64 balls bouncing 
  around simultaneously.
  (doesn't work in Splat! mode)

Size of balls:
  You can choose to have tiny balls or
  extra large ones. Large balls may slow
  the saver down. (no pun)
  The perspective option makes the size 
  of the balls depend on their place on the
  screen.
  (doesn't work in Splat! mode)

Size of spots (or blots):
  Each time a ball bounces it will leave
  a coloured spot. You can set the size
  of the spot to influence the appearance
  of the 'painting'.

Speed:
  You can choose from slow to turbo.
  A high number of balls can slow the 
  saver down, so turbo may not run 
  as fast as you'd expect.
  High speed, with a lot of large balls
  will eat a lot of CPU cycles.

Time per image:
  After a certain time Paintball decides
  the picture is finished and starts on
  a new painting. With this option you
  can set the time the screensaver will
  keep displaying a single picture.

Wipe canvas:
  Decides wether Paintball starts a new
  painting on a clean canvas or paints
  over the previous picture.


Versions
--------

v1.0 
  is the first release of the completed 
  saver.

v1.1
  - password protection added
  - more & smaller balls
  - adjustable speed added
  - check for colourdepth added (prevents
    running in 8-bit mode)

v1.2
  - even more balls
  - option to choose the size of balls
  - random spot size
  - Option to add more then one images
    of your own
  - more choices in speed 

v1.2b
  - empty image list bug removed that 
    would make the saver crash on
    Win2000 (and other?) systems

v1.3
  - time per image option added
  - wipe canvas option added
  - perspective ball size option added
  - stretch/black margin option added
  - improved graphics routine
  - option added to view this text
    from the setting screen
  - maximum number of balls increased
    to 64
    
v2.0
  - the "dirty balls bug" was finally
    fixed
  - subtle improvement in the paint
    spots
  - Paint Mode option added so you can
    switch from Bouncing Balls to
    Splattering Paint
  - new default (built in) images  
    


Acknowledgements
----------------

The graphics for this screensaver were made 
with the freeware raytracer POV-Ray 
(http://www.povray.org).

The installer was made by Brian Anderson.

This program was compressed with UPX, 
The Ultimate Packer for eXecutables
1996-2000 Markus Oberhumer & Laszlo Molnar, 
http://upx.tsx.org.



Distribution & contact
----------------------

This program is freeware. You are free to 
distribute it on the internet, as long as
you don't alter the package. For questions
about distribution on cd's or otherwise
please contact me at the adress below.

Questions & comments are welcome at: 
remco@onwijs.com

You can find more free screensavers at:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~remcodek/
or
http://www.onwijs.com/
