Twilight II review
By Chris Nelligan
Copyright (c) 1993 Apple Users' Group, Sydney
Republished from Applecations, a publication of the Apple Users' Group, Sydney, Australia.
Overview
Twilight II is a screen saver. A screen saver automatically kicks in and takes control of your IIgs when you have not used it for a period of time. Usually when it is activated fancy graphical effects start appearing on your screen. The idea of a screen saver is to stop burn-in on your monitor. Many users would have had their IIgs for 5 years or more, and you can see the menubar on the monitor without it even being turned on, this is because of screen burn-in.
Many people may remember Twilight the original shareware product. Twilight II is now a commercially released product. The original Twilight and even some of the early beta versions of Twilight II (here after referenced to as T2) crashed frequently, the release T2 has not crashed on me yet and the manual states quite a few times that the product is very stable, even over Appletalk networks.
Documentation
A well written 40 page manual comes with the package. At first glance it looks very much like a Seven Hills manual. When I asked Jim Maricondo (the author of T2) about this, he openly said "Their manuals are clear and hence I used the format as a starting point". The manual clearly explains how T2 works, how to install it and how each module works. Each graphical effect is a module.
Installation
T2 comes on two disks, on disk one is the installer program. Launching the installer program provides the familiar Apple installer program (see ScreenShot). There are a couple of installation options, minimum T2, complete T2, and selective module installation. T2 itself is a CDEV and it is installed into *:SYSTEM:CDEVS. A new folder is also created inside *:SYSTEM:CDEVS called TWILIGHT. This folder contains all of the modules that have been installed. A complete installation takes up 1.3 megabytes on your hard disk, T2 itself only takes up about 50k in main memory, and each module is loaded into memory as required. The amount of memory each module requires varies.
A sound control panel patcher program is also supplied. This program will add a further two system events that a sound can be attached to by using the Sound control panel. The two extra events are Screen Blanking and Screen Unblanking.
The only criticism I have is that T2 does not allow you to personalise your copy of the application unlike some other products (eg. Express, HardPressed, The Manager, Pointless, AutoArc and so on).
The Modules (screen blanks)
There are two distinct types of screen blanks, a background blank and a foreground blank. A background blank simply makes your entire screen black and allows the program that was running to continue (eg. A Finder copy). A foreground blank causes the currently selected effect module take over.
T2 will blank for Desktop programs (eg. AppleWorks GS), text based programs (eg. AppleWorks 3.0) and Low-res, Hi-Res and Double-HiRes programs (eg. Publish-It!).
Selecting the effect module to be used is done by opening the CDEV from the Control Panels. An NDA version of the CDEV is also provided. Once the CDEV is open a list of all effect modules is shown, selecting one (or even more for random mode) is done in the usual list selection scroll style box (see ScreenShot). Each effect can be customised and tested whilst in the CDEV.
T2 has a complete setup screen allowing easy configuration (see ScreenShot). It is possible to select the time period before the screen blanker will kick in, how to wake up the blanker, selecting what each corner of the screen will do (eg; never blank, blank now, foreground blank or background blank).
T2 allows you to use all effects from the Phantasm screen saver (part of Signature GS). T2 provides a 'YouDrawIt' screen effect where you use a graphics package to draw a graphic that T2 will then use.
Forty effect modules are provided with the package. Some of the better ones being, Fireworks, Snow, Mountains, Scanner, Sharks and Fish, Puzzling and Worms.
Writing your own modules
There is a section at the back of the manual with some technical information. A T2 programmers reference manual and same codes also exists and I will put these into our public domain. It won't be long before we see more effects coming out if anybody can write them.
Final comments, where to get it and how much is it?
I have about 10 different effects selected for random mode and it works wonderfully. My GS is on a network and it hasn't crashed when the server shuts down. T2 does require much memory and by deleting unwanted effect modules means that not much hard disk space is required either.
Nobody in Australia is currently stocking the product as far as I know. Resource Central, Big Red and DigiSoft all sell the package. The recommended retail price is US$40 and I have seen it available for a lot less (I purchased mine for US$20).

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