- - - - - - - - - - - - SSZPLAY.SCR vs 2.2 Notes (04/13/95) - - - - - - - - Thanks for checking out SRO's Z-PLAY screensaver! SHAREWARE NOTICE Z-PLAY is "SHAREWARE" and is provided at no charge for evaluation only. Feel free to share it with your friends, but do not give it away altered or as part of any other package. If you like Z-PLAY and are using it after a reasonable trial period, you must pay a registration fee of $15 to SRO SYSTEMS. If you do, you'll get the latest copy of the program without the annoying guilt screens. Registration can be sent to the address at the bottom of this document. Or print the "3DORDER.WRI" file. YOU CAN ALSO REGISTER ON COMPUSERVE SWREG FORUM - ID# 4589. DISCLAIMER Z-PLAY is supplied as is. SRO SYSTEMS provides no warranty, either expressed or implied. SRO SYSTEMS assumes no liability for damages, either direct or consequential, which may result from the use or mis-use of ZPLAY. REQUIREMENTS The file SSZPLAY.SCR is a Windows 3.1 screensaver written in Visual Basic. It is designed to run on any 100% IBM compatible PC with a 386 or better processor, at least 4 meg of ram and a 256 color VGA or SVGA video card. THIS PROGRAM REQUIRES VBRUN300.DLL TO BE IN YOUR WINDOWS\SYSTEM DIRECTORY. IF YOU HAVE ANY RECENT VISUAL BASIC PROGRAMS, YOU PROBABLY HAVE IT ALREADY. OR YOU CAN DOWNLOAD IT FROM MOST BBS's. INSTALLATION Installation is simple. Just run the program install.exe. If you're reading this, you've probably already done that! Run just as you would any other windows screensaver. Go to "Control Panel", select "Desktop", then select Z-PLAY from the screensavers list. All the functions are pretty self explanatory, and the help bar should tell you anything you need to know. DESCRIPTION The Z-PLAY animation screensaver is THE simple and convienient way to play .FLI and .AVI animations as well as Bitmap slideshows from Windows' screensaver control. There aren't any scripts to write, or hard to understand features. Just any easy to use screensaver that does some really cool stuff! __________________________________________________________________________ ABOUT THE ANIMATIONS There are three types animations the screensaver plays: Autodesk Animator (.FLI & .FLC files) FLIC's (.FLI,.FLC,.FLH,.FLT) are the standard formats for Autodesk Animator files which have pretty much become the standard for PC animations. ".FLI" files are 320 X 200 256 color. ".FLC" files are variable up to 640 x 480 256 color. Animations with resolutions of up to 1024 x 768 at 16 million colors can be made in the ".FLH & .FLT" formats, but even a 100mhz pentium wouldn't play those very well. Our own animations feature 3-D ray-traced surfaces, shadowing and texture maps. They take quite long to design and render (A single frame can take HOURS!). Thankfully, I've found ways to speed things up a bit, and for the styles most people order, they aren't tooo much more expensive than low end 2 dimensional animations. Video For Window (.AVI files) AVI files are almost a Microsoft standard video format. They support nearly any resolution, and also allow integrated (sychronized) audio playback. AVI playback is quite slow when compared to FLIC's, so we do not design animations natively in this format. . . However we can convert animations to AVI format if necessary. NOTE : AVI PLAYBACK REQUIRES MICROSOFTS VIDEO FOR WINDOWS RUNTIME (VFW). This can be found on all major online services as well as from Microsoft directly. Bitmap Slide Show (.BMP & .WMF files) New (from Z-PLAY version 2.0) is the ability to create a "SLIDESHOW" using your own bitmap or metafile graphics! Z-PLAY supports ANY BITMAPS of any size/color up to 1024 x 768 true color in the Windows RGB format. Most PC's are slow to switch between very large images, so I recommend using fairly small 16 color images to start. You can create the images in most paint programs (such as PC PAINTBRUSH). Slide show now allows TEXT OVERLAY where your message is superimposed on the image. You can set font, size and color of the text overlay for each image (up to 250) in the show. Files of the above types can be found on any online service. Good sources are in the COMPUSERVE and AMERICA ONLINE graphics/animation forums. __________________________________________________________________________ FEATURES SCREENSAVER HELP Z-PLAY has an "instant help" window at the bottom of the setup screen. Anything you need to know about the controls is (should be) explained there. Therefore, this documentation only explains the basics, and things that are not obvious when using the program. WAVE AUDIO SUPPORT Z-PLAY features .WAV audio playback. To play audio, an audio device driver must be enabled in Windows "control panel\drivers" setup screen. Read your sound card documentation for information on installing a Windows driver. Any Windows compatible soundcard will work, as will Microsoft's PC Speaker driver. (The PC Speaker driver WILL hog the system and slow video playback) Options allow .WAV file playback at the beginning of an animation, or at every loop cycle. You can also set ZPLAY to cycle through all the .Wav files in a given directory. To avoid slowing animation playback, wave files are ALWAYS loaded into RAM before playback. If you use large wave files, this can take quite a bit of time. I suggest only using small (under 20K bytes) wave files if the "REPEAT" option is used. That way the screensaver won't pause for too long between animations/images. The maximum size wave that can be loaded depends on how much windows memory is available AFTER the image or animation is loaded. NOTE : .WAV file playback is NOT enabled during .AVI video playback as an AVI files internal soundtrack will override it. MIDI FILE SUPPORT Z-PLAY now features MIDI file playback with all animation types. You can select whether the midi file plays only once at the beginning of playback, or repeats with each new animation/image. This feature supports only GENERAL MIDI (.MID) format MIDI files. To play MIDI files, an MCI MIDI device driver must be enabled in Windows "control panel\drivers" setup screen, AND a MIDI compatible sound card must be setup to receive the MIDI information. PASWORD PROTECTION Z-PLAY features ENCRYPTED password protection. That means if you're going to use the password protection DON'T FORGET YOUR PASSWORD! IF YOU DO, YOU WILL HAVE TO REBOOT WINDOWS! From the setup screen, you can select a password and change the messages that are displayed when the password protection is activated. Passwords are CASE SENSITIVE, so note the status of "CAPS LOCK" when entering. SCREENSAVER FILES Z-PLAY creates five different files which it places in the windows directory. These are : "ZAXIS.INI" - The initialization file. This is where Z-PLAY keeps all the startup settings. "ZPLAYTXT.OVR" - This file saves the message, font, size, and color data for your SLIDESHOW text overlays. "ZPLAYLST.DAT" - Stores the name and location of files in the "AUTODESK" animation playback list. "ZPLYLST2.DAT" - Stores the name and location of files in the "Image Display" playback list. "ZPLYLST3.DAT" - Stores the name and location of files in the "Video for Windows" playback list. If any of these files are deleted, Z-PLAY will create new ones, however all data will be lost! __________________________________________________________________________ IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN: A) Registering this Screensaver B) Raytraced animations C) Other products of SRO D) Suggestions, comments Please call, write, fax or email us. You can reach us at: SRO SYSTEMS P.O. Box 5028 Blue Jay, CA 92317 Phone (909) 337-7535 Fax (909) 337-0575 Email: COMPUSERVE : 75604,3535 AMERICA ONLINE : SROSYSTEMS We answer ALL calls/faxes/email within one day. ENJOY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SEAN * * * Z-PLAY is Copyright 1994, 1995 SRO SYSTEMS. All rights not explicitly released in SHAREWARE NOTICE (top of this document) are reserved.