Screensaver Maker

Someone asked me to make a screen saver where I worked, and I was surprised there weren't any free tools (although I found some malware ones).  So I figured I'd write one and give it away (I swear :). 

The problem is a (Windows) screensaver is basically a renamed .exe and I'm not sure how to distrubute a program that compiles another program.

Any idea how to approach this?

Lee
Thursday, January 8, 2004

Create a standard "Screensaver Viewer" application.  Put all the variable data in a separate file, which the viewer reads at runtime.  Your Screensaver Maker only needs to create the data file, and then zip it together with the standard Viewer.

Oren
Thursday, January 8, 2004

Thanks, that's certainly a much better approach than my original idea.

Any idea how I could get it all in one file?

Lee
Thursday, January 8, 2004

Delphi.

If you mean how to make the created screensaver a single file, you'd have to recompile the .scr. You're better off just making the "player" scr distributable and having an associated resource file as the screensaver.

Philo

Philo
Thursday, January 8, 2004

It's possible to modify the resources of a Windows EXE at runtime; see UpdateResource() and friends.

Oren
Friday, January 9, 2004

But that only works on Windows NT/2000/XP.

Frederik Slijkerman
Friday, January 9, 2004

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction; this'll be a fun side project.

Lee
Friday, January 9, 2004

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