SoccerSaver
 Remco de Korte - 2001
version 3.2


Short Info
----------

Soccersavers is a screensaver with a 3D rendered soccerball 
bouncing over your screen, which is covered with grass. 
It also displays one or several lines of text. 

In version 3.0 two teams of players were added to perform a 
Monthy Python like interpretation of the noble game of Soccer, 
with six clones of Mr. Gumby running over the screen.
The routines that control these players are a specially
(un)developed type of AI called Artificial Debility. 

To run SoccerSaver you'll need Win95, Win98, WinNT or Win2000.

Soccersaver.exe will install the screensaver to a directory of 
your choice. Run the program again if you want to uninstall 
the screensaver.


Options
-------

--- Text ---

You can configure the contents and looks of the displayed text.

You can enter as much lines of text as you like but because 
the program tries to fit it all on the screen, at a certain 
point your text will become unreadable. Also, a lot of text 
will mean that the saver may take several seconds to start.

You can choose the alignment of the text, left aligned, right 
aligned or centered.

You can choose the font face of the text but beware that 
certain fonts will be hard to read when projected on the grass 
background.

To make the text more readable you can control the brightness
of the projected text.

You can NOT choose the font size. 
When entering your text in the textbox you will notice that 
the longer the text, the smaller the font. This is similar to 
what will happen on the main screen. The program will try to 
fit the text on the screen, shrinking the fontsize until 
either the text fits or it can't get any smaller. 

Note: If your text is too long the screensaver may crash.

Your screen resolution affects the maximum number of lines the 
text may have. The purpose of this saver was to show a short 
text (quote, message, warning), not a complete novel.


--- Players ---

There are two teams of 3 players.

You can choose the outfits of each team or let the program
choose these at random. In the unregistered version there are
4 outfits to choose from. The registered version has eight
outfits and more will be added on request.

You can give each team a name, but this will only be visible
if you want to keep track of the score.

If you have registered you can also set the name of each 
player and have it displayed along with the player statistics.
A yellow name indicates the player who last played the ball.
The green and yellow numbers are the nu,ber of goals each
player scored (red are goals for the opponent).


--- Field ---

The 3D rendered grass from previous versions is replaced by
a runtime generated field. You can influence the appearance
with these settings:

  field quality - where you can choose between flat, rough,
    bumpy and hilly
  lines - you can choose to have all the white lines, only 
    some (the outher edges and the goal area) or none at all.
  block pattern - this gives the impression you have a neatly
    mowed field

--- Scoring ---

You can keep track of the scoring. This is simply a random
thing. The ball bounces off the edges and off the players.
If it bounces in one of the goal areas this counts as a goal.

For custom versions a bias can be built in to this. ;)


Versions
--------

v2.1 was the first shareware version.
  Previous versions were freeware and didn't have the 
  possibility to change the displayed text.

v2.2 some internal changes

v2.3 option added to adjust the brightness of
  the text

v3.0 a major upgrade. The text part is the same but
  two teams of 3 players were added. You can change the names
  and outfits of these teams. You can also change the 
  appearance of the playing field, adding lines, bumps or a
  pattern as if the grass is mowed. A scoring option is added.
  As a graphical gimmick, shadows are added to the ball and 
  the players.

v3.1 option added to change and display player names and 
  statistics. Slightly improved tactics of the players.

v3.1b bug fixed which didn't hide the taskbar.

v3.2 bug fixed that made the random teams not quite so random.
  A Much smaller file because of a new way of handling image
  data.


Wishlist/plans:
  - better AI
  - more players
  - goalkeepers
  - comments
  - sound effects
  - different appearance for each player (this will require
    a lot of data and will make the program too large to
    put on my website)

  
Acknowledgements
----------------

The graphics for this screensaver were made with the freeware 
raytracer POV-Ray (http://www.povray.org).

The installer was made by Brian Anderson.

This program was compressed with UPX, The Ultimate Packer for 
eXecutables 1996-2000 Markus Oberhumer & Laszlo Molnar, 
http://upx.tsx.org.


Registration, distribution & contact
------------------------------------

This program is shareware. You can buy a registrationkey for 
$10 at www.regnow.com. See register.txt for more information.

You are free to distribute this file on the internet, as long 
as you don't alter the package. For questions about 
distribution on cd's or otherwise please contact me at the 
adress below.

Questions & comments are welcome at:
  remco@onwijs.com

You can find more screensavers at:
  http://www.onwijs.com
