GameExtender as screensaver, is this possible?

[popcorrin]

My gameex box and my desktop pc are networked together. I was wondering if it would be possible to set up my desktop pc to run gameextender as the screensaver?

[bkenobi]

I don't know of anyway to do it out of the box, but you could always fake it. A screen saver is really just an application that kicks in after a certain amount of time with inactivity and stops upon appropriate user input. You could have a script running in the background on your PC polling for inactivity or checking to see if the screen saver has kicked in (I don't know how to do the second one, that's just a thought to save cpu cycles). If the time limit is reached, the script would then launch the game extender process. It would then sit waiting for the appropriate input from the user (mouse movement, any or a specific key press, etc.). You could even set it up so that it was password protected.

If you want to do it right, you would create a custom screen saver that would go into the control panel, but I assume that would require programming in some C variant. It's really just a question of how much effort you want to put in.

ALTERNATELY: If you are willing to wait for this to reach the top of Tom's priority list, you could always add a feature request for it. However, my guess would be that this would take a while to reach the top. I could be wrong though...I often am

[bkenobi]

I just read something interesting on the AHK forums. It sounds as though a screen saver (.scr) is really just an exe file that's been renamed. If that's true, then this should be pretty easy. I don't use game extender, so you will have to do the testing.

1) Set up the game extender viewer so that it works on the PC

2) Copy the executable and replace the .exe with a .scr

3) Point your windows screen saver to that file

I can't say that that will work, but it certainly is worth a try!

[bkenobi]

Bahhh, it looks like it's a little more complicated. You will need a wrapper afterall. Basically you need a script that will call the game extender process. Here's a useful link where they talk about building a basic screen saver in AHK. There's code supplied, so I think it's nearly plug and play.

http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/topic12828.html

http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/topic3140.html

http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2668

http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1747

http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1940

[popcorrin]

I am a little intimidated by AHK, I think mainly because I haven't had a chance to study how to use it. Thanks for the links.

[bkenobi]

The basics are pretty simple and there are a bunch of examples to learn from. I agree that the higher end stuff is a bit complex for the beginner. I mostly use a few commands that are obvious and then search for the rest in the help file. Also, they do have a very active forum that seems pretty helpful (although admittedly I have not asked anything yet).

If you know any programming language, then you know how to build the structure for a program. If you know that, the rest is just syntax...

[Tempest]

I've asked for help over there, they seem to be friendly.....