1 - How do I install or uninstall these screensavers?

Please see the instructions page.

2 - This screensaver is broken. You write rotten software.

Ninety-nine percent of the time when one of these screensavers does not work, it turns out the be a problem with your graphics driver. Find out who manufactured your graphics card and download the most current driver from their website. Then install the driver and try the screensaver again.

If that doesn't work, and if you're a programmer, you can always download the source code and try to debug it yourself.

3 - I only get about one frame per second. Why is this screensaver running slowly?

You probably just need to update your graphics driver as described in the previous answer. If that doesn't work, it probably means that your computer is an antique and should be replaced by a modern one. Any current computer should run these savers at a tolerable frame rate if not better. Some of these screensavers are very demanding of your CPU and graphics card, and they will perform best on a good gaming computer. Laptops--especially netbooks--are often too underpowered to run these savers smoothly.

4 - This saver is running slowly, and I am using Intel graphics.

First, read this. In a nutshell, Intel disables hardware acceleration for OpenGL screensavers. I would like to believe that they have a good reason for doing this, but I cannot think of one. I have written to Intel a couple times to ask about this, but they have never responded.

One kind user reported a workaround: Try renaming your OpenGL savers from ".scr" to ".sCr". It appears the Intel driver does not check all variations on capitalization when it deactivates hardware rendering.

5 - Will you turn these savers into visualizations for my mp3 player?

No, but you can download the source code and do it yourself if you want.

6 - Will you make an interface in Skyrocket that lets me script my own fireworks shows and write words in the sky with glowing balls of fire?

No, but you can download the source code and do it yourself if you want.

7 - This saver only appears on one of my monitors. Will you make it work on multiple monitors?

Really Slick Screensavers since version 0.1 (at the top of the downloads page) has been capable of running on multiple monitors. These savers should display across multiple monitors if you use only one graphics card with multiple outputs and have set up your monitors using Windows's span mode. This type of configuration should give you a single framebuffer that spans all your monitors. Some driver-specific multiple monitor setups will create a separate framebuffer for each monitor. These savers do not support multiple framebuffers, but you can always download the source code and modify it yourself.

Some users have reported working multi-monitor configurations with multiple graphics cards. Really Slick Screensavers does not specifically support this, but it appears that graphics drivers and Windows sometimes cooperate to make this work. Your mileage may vary.

Ports for other operating systems may or may not have multiple monitor support. Only the porters can answer that question.

8 - I want to know how fast this saver is running. What is the frame rate?

To display statistics, press 's' while the saver is running. For more keyboard commands, please see the instructions page.

9 - I can see horizontal lines on my monitor when the screensaver is running. How do I get rid of the lines?

Those horizontal lines are caused by your graphics driver copying images to the display while the monitor is in the process of drawing an image. Enable the "vertical sync" or "vsync" option in your graphics driver to prevent this visual problem.

10 - This screensaver runs too fast. How do I slow it down?

There are two ways to limit the frame rate on these savers. The easiest way is to enable the "vertical sync" or "vsync" option in your graphics driver. This will make the frame rate slow down to the monitor refresh rate (this also improves the visual quality of graphics applications). The other way is to use the saver's internal frame rate limiter, which can be accessed through its configuration dialog box.

The animation in most of my savers is time-based, but the animation in Flux, Plasma, and Solar Winds is frame-based. These three savers use iterative math, which means the state of the animation each frame depends on the state from the previous frame. Unbound, these three savers often run much too fast on modern computers, which is visually unappealing. Their internal framerate limiters are set to reasonable values by default. In the other savers that use time-based animation, the limiters are off by default.

11 - Your saver uses 100% of my CPU. How do I make it use less?

Limit the frame rate. See previous answer.

12 - How can I pay you for this magnificent screensaver?

Since I started gearing this site up for earning money from Retrobooster, I feel weird accepting donations. But thank you very much for thinking about it. And thank you to everyone who has donated in the past and helped to keep Really Slick Screensavers around.

13 - Skyrocket is broken. I see the explosions and then hear the sounds a few seconds later.

Speed of sound at sea level = 344 m/s. Speed of light = 299,792,458 m/s. You need to get away from your computer for a while. Go out and see a real fireworks show. They're much better than a screensaver, anyway.

14 - How do I learn to make my own screensavers?

First you need to learn how to program. For my savers, I use C++ as the main programming language, OpenGL for graphics, and OpenAL for sound. Google is a great source of information if you need tutorials on making savers and programming with OpenGL. The OpenGL wiki and OpenGL forums are great places to find solutions to difficult OpenGL problems.

You can download the source code for these savers and use it to learn by example. You might want to start by using the included rsWin32Saver library as the base for your saver. It opens an OpenGL window and provides prototypes for the necessary functions that your saver needs to provide. To find easy examples of how to use the rsWin32Saver library, have a look at the code for some of my simple savers such as Flux or Flocks.