- - - - - - - - - - - - SSZPLAY.SCR vs 2.1 Notes (03/05/95) - - - - - - - - Thanks for checking out SRO's ZPLAY screensaver! ZPLAY 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 ZPLAY 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.TXT" file. YOU CAN ALSO REGISTER ON COMPUSERVE SWREG FORUM - ID# 4589. DISCLAIMER ---------- ZPLAY 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, THIS FILE IS TOO LARGE (398K) TO FIT IN THIS DEMO. IF YOU HAVE ANY RECENT VISUAL BASIC PROGRAMS, YOU PROBABLY HAVE IT ALREADY. OR YOU CAN UPLOAD IT FROM MOST BBS's. INSTALLATION ------------ While it is more than extremely improbable that using this program would lobotomize your system, you should be backing up everything you care about ANYWAY! If you got our demo disk, installation is easy. Just type ssinstal c: from your a drive, and the files will be copied to your windows directory. If you got the BBS version, just unzip the ZIP file and copy everything to your windows directory. Run just as you would any other windows screensaver. All the functions are pretty self explanatory, and the help bar should tell you anything you need to know. DESCRIPTION ----------- The Z-PLAY Screensaver is a convienient way to play animations from Windows' screensaver control. There aren't many exotic functions, just a panel that lets you pick an animation type, an animation, and the speed it plays back. Z-PLAY will play Autodesk (.FLI & .FLC) animations, Video For Windows (.AVI) files and will also play a slideshow of a sequence of bitmaps in the selected directory. New to this version of Z-PLAY is: * Playback multiple Flic's. * Fade transition between Flic's A LITTLE 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 Microsoft's standard video format. They support nearly any resolution, and also allow integrated (sychronized) audio playback. AVI playback is extemely 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 (for ZPLAY version 2.0) is the ability to cycle through all the bitmap or metafile graphics in the selected directory! ZPLAY supports ANY BITMAPS of any size/color up to 1024 x 768 true color in the Windows RGB format. Most PC's will be 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 shows now also allow 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. WAVE AUDIO SUPPORT ZPLAY features .WAV audio playback. To play audio files, an audio device driver must be enabled in Window's "control panel\drivers" setup screen. Any 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. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - If you are interested in: A) Registering this Screensaver B) Raytraced animations C) Never Ending Image Library C) Signature/Logo Scans 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 most calls/faxes/email within one day. ENJOY . . . . SEAN * * * ZPLAY is Copyright 1994, 1995 SRO SYSTEMS