IdleWild
IdleWild is a plug-in based screen saver program for Windows 3 developed by Bradford Christian and first published by Microsoft with in the Microsoft Entertainment Pack For Windows in 1990. Entertainment packs two and three each added eight more screen savers. Bradford Christian and Tony Krueger wrote most of the screen savers, but a couple other programmers developed the others. The program was no doubt meant to duplicate the success After Dark had on the Macintosh.
Because my family had the first Entertainment Pack on out 1991 family computer, I saw the screen savers from the first IdleWild, but I didn't see the others until many years later. I thought the were kind of neat, but pretty boring over all.
Review
Good
- Unlike most Windows 3 programs, the program works at any screen resolution.
- Several features have been added like password locking and hot spot activation.
- With the first three Entertainment Packs, you get 21 total screen savers.
Bad
- Most of the screensavers are pretty dull to watch.
- Compared to the zen style of After Dark, IdleWild falls short.
Ugly
- Nothing.
Screensavers
Screensaver | Pack | Image | Creator | Description | Opinion |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Blackness | 1 | Bradford Christian | Just blacks out the screen. | Quality: 1. Pretty dull, but certainly effective. | |
Boat Race | 3 | Tony Krueger | Sailboats race around buoys. | Quality: 2. It's a nice attempt, but the boats look really weird rotating the way they do, and I would have liked to see water or waves. | |
Bricks | 2 | Ed Jalley | Breaks the screen up into a grid and eliminates blocks, while the others fall into place. | Quality: 1. Pretty dull with clunky movement. | |
Chomp | 3 | Ed Jalley | Bites are taken out of the screen starting at the corners. | Quality: 1. The bites occur at blocky even of intervals. | |
Dancing Lines | 1 | Bradford Christian | Color-shifting lines bounce around the screen and leave behind a trail. | Quality 3: Pretty, zen-like, and effective. | |
Divide & Conquer | 3 | Tony Krueger | Doubles the screen alternating horizontally and vertically. | Quality 2: Interesting to watch, but not an effective screen saver. | |
Dropout | 1 | Tony Krueger | Parts of the screen pop out and bounce away like the ending of Solitaire (Microsoft). | Quality: 2. Fun, but still kind of dull. | |
Fade Away | 3 | Tony Krueger | Slowly fades individual screen colors to black. | ||
Fireworks | 1 | Bradford Christian | Fireworks shoot up into the black screen and explode while a fountain continually jets sparks. | Quality 3. | |
IconBownz! | 3 | Doug Timpe | Bounces a random icon across the screen. | ||
Life | 2 | Bradford Christian | Runs a random simulation of Conway's Game of Life. | ||
Mandelbrot | 2 | Matthew Bellew | Cycles through random sections of the Mandelbrot set. | ||
Oriental Rug | 3 | Tony Krueger | Draws repeating patterns in dots resembling a rug. | ||
Random | 1 | Bradford Christian | Picks a random screensaver from the list. | ||
Shuffle | 2 | Tony Krueger | Turns the screen into a number slider puzzle and plays forever. | ||
Spider Web | 2 | Tony Krueger | Draws line art spider webs. | ||
Spotlights | 2 | Tony Krueger | Dims the screen and spotlights randomly move around. | ||
Stars | 1 | Bradford Christian | A basic star field simulator, a la Star Trek. | ||
Stretch | 2 | Tony Krueger | Randomly zooms and stretches the screen. | ||
Tinfoil | 3 | Ed Halley | Embosses the screen in gray. | ||
Trails | 3 | Michael Gates | Colored worms slowly eat away at the screen. | ||
Wipe Out | 1 | Bradford Christian | Performs a basic wipe to black and then jumps to a random screen saver. |