matrix screen saver
by rksh, kelek, wos and uthu
this is a java adaptation of the cool view of the matrix in text characters (supposedly
the 'raw' datastream, since rendering the contents requires a matrix-based piece of
software). while the people who produced the movie did release a
shockwave windows/mac screensaver (kudos!), they didn't do a very convincing job of it, and it
was critically hobbled by periodic 'blasts' generated by scaling bitmaps. for people
who want a less spastic, more realistic, and scalable solution, here's the
unicode adaptation in beta.
ByteCode files (you need Java 1.1 or later to run these locally)
Source Code files (what you need if you want to learn how it was done or
change it)
Troubleshooting:
-
Try resizing the applet window if it comes up blank. this fixes lots of problems.
- if your system
doesn't like unicode, you're in trouble. windows95 is a notable
pain in the arse when it comes to this. if nothing happened when you loaded this
page, or (better), a window full of little 'boxes' instead of characters came
up, you need to either install java 1.1 or get unicode support working before
anything exciting happens. for an
explaination of using unicode fonts on windows machine jdk1.1s, see
the
javasoft reference or netscape's reference on
it. i've found that this works with the Cyberbit Bitstream
font (freely downloadable on the net, here
or here)
and
sometimes the Lucida Sans Unicode font. you have to make sure that the
cyberbit font is actually installed, not just in your font
directory (windows NT handles this for you, 95 does not). if your 95 box is as messsed up
as mine in terms of installing fonts, i recommend the Font Lister free- and shareware
utilities. to setup the font.properties file for your particular
version of java, check this page for hints and
instructions.
- it's a little slow. so sue me. or better yet, fix it and show me how.
- this probably won't work under internet explorer; find me their
font.properties file, and patch it. this may not work under some versions
of netscape, since without an upgrade, many version only support java 1.0
(you'll need 1.1). Netscape also compains about applet security
exceptions: in short to run this, use a java 1.1 appletviewer, or
download it and run it locally.
- the original appears to use a mixture of katakana (the japanese exclaimation and
phrase importation syllibrary) and arabic numerals, sampled from a
text-only display and played back horizontal-reversed on flat panels. this
version only uses these characters the right-way-round. if you come up
with a good, fast way
to reverse the painting direction, let me know.
Cool Hint:
Chris Wells suggests replacing three lines of code as follows, to create a
border-free window as a screensaver:
1.) in matrixss.java:
md.setSize(400, 250);
should be changed to represent your current screen resolution:
md.setSize(1024,768); for example.
2.) in matrixDisplay.java:
the line which reads
public class matrixDisplay extends Frame
should be changed to read:
public class matrixDisplay extends Window
and the line which reads
super();
should be adjusted to read
super(new Frame());
Just recompile both files, and you'll have a functional matrix screensaver.
Please feel free to look at the code; matrixss.java, RNGthread.java,
RCGthread.java and matrixDisplay.java
in this directory, but please do not redistribute, since i don't
know how the corporations involved would feel about that.
Last Modified: 5.18.99
by: Justin Wojdacki