This screensaver is power hungry! It was taking 50% of my CPU just while selected in the Display Properties dialog box.

Overall though, I don't see anything terribly wrong with the screensaver. Might be nice to have your own choice of background music but it was nice to have the gamma adjustment option at least.

epoclaen  –  14 years ago  –  Βρήκατε αυτό το σχόλιο χρήσιμο? ναι | όχι (+29)

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Halloween in the Attic is a cute rather than scary screensaver that relies a bit heavily on a 3D accelerated graphics card or on-board chip... on some PCs/laptops it may run slow or not at all. You can set it's screen size, turn music & SFX on/off, set volume, set 12/24 hour clock on/off, there are checkboxes to show FPS & Exit on Mouse Move. While Astro Gemini lists the specs for this 2007 screensaver as "Windows 9x/2000/XP/Vista", it seemed to run in 7 ult 64 just fine. Note that the configuration dialog works, but doesn't like enlarged display fonts in 7.

Halloween in the Attic's installation wants to put 5 (older version) files in the system folder -- besides the screensaver itself they are: "msvcp71.dll", "msvcr71.dll", "no", & "bass.dll". The 1st 2 are Microsoft C & C++ libraries, the 3rd is an HTML file, but it's the 4th, "bass.dll" that *might* cause you the most problems... Bass.dll [un4seen.com] is used for audio in other apps & quite a few games. While along with the two MS files it's Not registered with Windows, it is none-the-less in the system folder where apps often can & do check 1st for any supporting files they need -- If a game for example includes & uses a newer version of bass.dll, but instead uses this one, that game's audio *might* not work as well or at all. [If you do find you have problems you can try deleting bass.dll in the system folder, or replacing it with a newer version from the un4seen site.] Installation adds an Astro Gemini key along with 1 for uninstall -- *un* installing removes the uninstall key only. It also deletes the ~10 MB screensaver (.scr) & "NO" files, the Start Menu shortcuts, & the program's folder [6 files & 1 folder holding the uninstall app & an html page]. It Does Not Remove the 2 MS files or bass.dll [probably because other Astro Gemini screensavers might use bass.dll in this location, while several apps might depend on the 2 MS files -- OTOH if you didn't have them before, you don't need them now].

Personally I think my wife would like it, so I'll try it out later, just copying the .scr file to see how well it works with the graphics card in her PC. Since she's got well over a dozen games she's picked up from the Game GOTD site, & most every one uses a copy of bass.dll, I'll not chance the regular install -- I'm sure she's got *current* versions of the 2 MS runtime files already installed.

mike  –  14 years ago  –  Βρήκατε αυτό το σχόλιο χρήσιμο? ναι | όχι (+17)

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problem fixed thru a system restore.
BEWARE: program seems to Corrupt a few BASS.DLL files
please use caution

lionheartirc  –  14 years ago  –  Βρήκατε αυτό το σχόλιο χρήσιμο? ναι | όχι (+13)

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big thumbs down this programe has now caused all my screen savers to now have a BASS.DLL fail before they will start thus they do not work as you must now clear fail message for them to start up.
seems all of gemini screen savers are huge memory cpu hogs.
will never download any of their software ever again.

lionheartirc  –  14 years ago  –  Βρήκατε αυτό το σχόλιο χρήσιμο? ναι | όχι (+11)

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#6: "... all my screen savers to now have a BASS.DLL fail before they will start thus they do not work as you must now clear fail message for them to start up. seems all of gemini screen savers are huge memory cpu hogs."

FWIW, you might try downloading & copying the latest bass.dll file to the system folder, or, if the other screensavers, apps etc. you have won't work with the latest version, you might revert to your previous bass.dll & see if today's GOTD will use it? Bass.dll really should be kept in the program's or game's own folder just to prevent these sorts of issues, but that's more work for screensaver developers, having to use something else or re-locate their main files to a program folder.

As far as resources, it really depends on your rig, & more precisely, what type of graphics hardware it has. If the graphics hardware can't provide the assist, then the CPU has to take over, doing the D3D stuff in software -- that's both slower & resource intensive.

mike  –  14 years ago  –  Βρήκατε αυτό το σχόλιο χρήσιμο? ναι | όχι (+11)

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