Qix Screen Saver

In this screen saver, a group of lines snakes its way across your screen, bouncing off the edges. As it moves, it slowly changes from one bright color to the next.

Background

The Qix screensaver module is based on a module written by Larry Cordner for NEXTSTEP's BackSpace screen saver program.

The movement algorithm in this module is unchanged but the actual drawing code itself is all new and radically different. For starters, the original module was in black and white! We have given the module new options and features, tuned it to look great on Mac OS X, added color, and based the new Objective-C code upon Apple's Quartz and Cocoa technologies.

Configuration

image of Qix preference pane
Qix Preferences

In this screen saver there are two basic parameters available to you, "Speed" and "Tail Length".

"Speed" controls the screen saver's attempted frame rate and ranges from 10 to 100 frames per second. Of course, the actual frame rate achieved will depend upon your computer's ability to keep up. As such, you may not be able to get a full 100 frames per second even if you request it. Setting the speed lower will use less CPU, which may be important if you are running background processes such as SETI@home or a web server. The default setting is 35 frames per second.

"Tail Length" controls how long the Qix's tail is. Longer settings will allow more line segments to be on the screen at a time. There can be between 10 and 100 segments. The default is 55 segments.