SBRail: Model Railroad ScreenSaver

(c) Scott M. Baker, smbaker@sb-software.com 

SBRail is a ScreenSaver for Windows-95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP. You must have DirectDraw version 7 installed on your computer to use this ScreenSaver. If you do not have DirectDraw and need it, I suggest searching the web (www.shareware.com is a good place) for "DirectDraw" or "DirectX".

I will also try to keep a few links to DirectX available from my SBRail page at http://www.sb-software.com/sbrail/

Specifically, this ScreenSaver displays a scrolling train on your screen. The cars in the train are randomly selected and put together.

There are two display modes:

• Normal: The trains are displayed "transparently" over a background image. Several background images are included. This requires a fairly good video card capable of hardware transparent blitting, double buffering, and a decent amount of video ram.
• Legacy: This displays the trains over a plain blue background. This is good for use with older video cards that don't support transparent blitting and/or double-buffering. You should not enable legacy mode unless you need it since Legacy mode is kind of ugly.

SBRail will attempt to automatically choose the correct mode depending on your hardware configuration. However, you can override this choice by choosing 'Setup' from the Windows ScreenSaver Configuration. If output is too jittery or blocky and you're operating in normal mode, then you may wish to force it to Legacy mode which should reduce the jitter.

For registered users, there are a few "bonus cars" that can be enabled. The bonus cars will have a lower probability of being displayed than the normal cars. In general, they're kind of silly, but I felt the need to give registered users a few perks over the people who don't register. Registered users also get the option to turn off the "title screen" that appears whenever the screensaver starts.

• Version 1.0
  • Initial public release
• Version 1.1
  • Randomized the random number generator so new trains are created at each invocation
  • Fixed problem with crashes and/or no output due to some bizarre directx problems
  • Added some links and email info to the readme file
• Version 1.2
  • Fixed bug in install program
  • Better error handling if car file(s) missing
• Version 1.3
  • Major rewrite
  • Switched from MSVC to BCB
  • New install program
  • Many bugs fixed
• Version 1.4
  • Added missing cars that were left out from 1.3
  • Added bonus cars
• Version 1.5
  • Got rid of that damn jitter
  • Added another bonus car: hummer

You may email me at smbaker@sb-software.com

The latest sbrail may be found at http://www.sb-software.com/sbrail/