Worms Screen Saver: Beta Vrs0.8                  6th July 1996
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~                  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

#1. What have you got here?
#2. Why is it only a Beta?
#3. Who the Hell does Modesty think she is?
#4. Contact.


#1. What have you got here?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You should have this text file (no really!), and Wormsss.zip.  The ZIP 
file should be unzipped into your windows\system directory, using the
-d option

You should end up with;
Wormsss			(.scr)
Wormsss 		(.ini)
sounds\hello 		(.wav)
sounds\sg 		(.wav)

The Worms Screen Saver can now be set up via the normal Screen Savers 
tab.

NB. This is Win95 ONLY! It will NOT work in old Windows (atm)
NOTE (Last minute, It *may* work with Old Windows, but don't
hold your breath, you can only try)


#2. Why is it only a Beta?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This program has only had a couple of days spent on it, in-between 
"realwork", and as such it isn't completed yet.  Things that still need 
attention;

As it's a screen saver, the program can start at anytime, when the user 
is in any directory, as such the program can't assume that its working 
directory is the same as where the program was run from.  For example it
can't assume the sounds are in \sounds as the program may have started up 
from d:\temp.

For this reason the program need to work out where it's kept on the hard 
drive.  At the moment it assumes it's in C:\windows\system, so it uses 
the full path name of c:\windows\system\sound\sg.wav to find the sg.wav 
file.  If your windows directory is called something else the program 
will probably not start.

(actually the program checks for;
windows\system
win\system
win95\system
windoze\system
on both the C: and D: drives, if it's anywhere else, it won't work.)

I feel that a couple more weapons need to be added; the two I have in 
mind The Sheep and Dynamite.  The other weapons may be added at a later 
date, but for the moment the amount of work need to get them to animate 
smoothly and quickly outweighs the benefit of adding them.

The shotgun blast is going to be changed from a circle hole to a group of 
smaller holes, to represent shotgun pellets better.

Pixels falling from the gunshots are NOT going to be added, they take too 
long to write to screen.

The other major thing to be added; the worms should be affect by gunshots
and Dynamite blasts, so in Vrs1.x I hope to have the worms ducking and 
flying through the air.

Perhaps in the future I may go for an interactive version , playing Worms 
on your background wallpaper would be cool, but that's IMHO beyond what 
VB can do (quickly enough) so I guess I'll have to learn Visual C++ and
DirectX II first :)


#3. Who the Hell does Modesty think she is?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Modesty is a great believer in DIY and tinkering with computers, if there 
isn't a program to do what you want, write it.  I was fed up of having 
this box on the desk that'd only do half the things I wanted it to do.

The other part of it is seeing something and thinking "I could do that"
(William Latham and Organic Art being my next `target').  So when I saw a 
post in Worm2Worm #18 asking about a Worms Screen Saver and the reply 
went along the lines of ppl at Team17 having to take time out of their 
busy schedule to write it....I thought "ah what the heck, I'll have a 
go".

So here's the Beta, the program was (is being) written in Visual Basic.  
VB really wasn't designed for this type of work, there's lots of stuff 
that I think would be cool to add, but it's just not feasible.

I sometimes get asked; "Can you do such-and-such in VB" The answer is 
always yes, the real issue is "How hard is it to do such-and-such, and 
how quickly will it run"

Taking the above example of pixels falling from a gun shot; there is no 
simple way of doing this in VB while also letting the worm finish it's 
animation *AND* checking for other worms being hit *AND* sending them 
flying while keeping the speed up, but like I said it's not really 
designed for it I guess.  

#4. Contact.
~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you'd like to comment on this program; bug reports or suggestion, or 
to chat for any other reason please feel free to E-Mail me at the 
following;
modesty@io.com

Sorry but it may take a couple of days to get back to you, but the lag is 
just hell 

Happy Worming,
              Modesty
                     xxxx


#5. Legal Stuff.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is a 100% unofficial Worms Screen Saver, it is NOT endorsed by Team17 in anyway.
Any technical problems should be address to Modesty modesty@io.com.

Worms, Worms:Reinforcements & the Worms Sprites are trademarkes/copyright Team17
all rights reserved.  This Worms Screen Saver is Copyright (c) 1996 Modesty,
MultiVisionMirrorShades.

This is only a BETA version and is FREEWARE but...  You may not UPLOAD, DOWNLOAD or in 
any other way distribute this piece of software.  You may only DOWNLOAD it from 
Modestys FTP site.  If you see this version anywhere else you have an old version.

I'm not doing this to be nasty, I just want to make sure that people only get the 
final version from other places.

This program is given as is, I will not be held in now way responsible for any damage 
to hardware, software to data you it at your own risk.
