(C) 2000 Keith Sear
- All rights reserved
http://www.cs.cf.ac.uk/User/K.D.W.Sear/marrilmatic/
Use of this application is at your own risk,I will not be held responsible if it crashes your server, deletes your hard disk, ruins your social life, or places an ancient voodoo curse upon you which results in the death of your pet gold fish.
This application is provided free of charge under the condition it is distributed in it's original form. Do not modify it, or any of it's files, and do not charge any money for it other than duplication costs.
Can't be bothered to read all this? don't blame you. Just follow these easy steps.
1. Install VBRUN60 if you don't have it already
2. run install
3. load an actor from the start menu (marrilmatic\actors)
4. click on the actor to make it animate
Marrilmatic is an application which loads a moving character onto your desktop, these characters are known as actors. Marrilmatic was design to enhance the users desktop with pokemon characters, for purely entertainment purposes.
The actor can take various forms, depending which are installed, and several can be loaded at once (how many depends on how powerful your computer is)
Four levels of priority, reducing CPU overhead when Actor is not being played
with
Animations
Configurable processor requirements
Sound
Responds to user clicks
Appears in system tray
Evolving poke-actors
Interaction between actors (Via DDE)
1.Quite high peak CPU usage (10-25% on my P2-350)
2.If you want to make your own animation files, you'll have a hard time!
3.Actors have a tendency to leave trails when there's a lot of them or if the
PC is slow
A Pentium II
A true colour video card
A Sound Card
16 MB of memory
A mouse
VB6 Runtime library
Internet Explorer 4 - to view this help file!
Actors can be loaded from the start menu, or by double clicking on their files (.mact)
to add an actor to the start menu, right click on it's file (.mact) and select install.
To configure the system use the application 'MarrilConfig.exe'. The following options are available:
| Application Path | the path at which the application is installed |
| Initial priority | selects the state which the actor starts in (see priority below) |
| Audio Enabled | Selects if the actor will be quiet or not. |
| Splash screen enabled | Selects if the loading screen is shown. |
| No transparency | Disables see through backgrounds switching this on will reduce processing power dramatically, with the disadvantage that the actor will be in a permanent coloured box |
| Override actor defaults | overrides actors recommended settings. |
| Advanced Configuration | these settings are automatically configured using the 'wizard' button, and are not intended for manual alteration |
| Wizard | configures the advanced settings by asking you simple questions |
To load an actor, double click on it's .mact file. The actor will load and appear on screen.
To interact with the Actor, simply click on it with the left mouse button, the actor will speak or wave in response. To move the actor, right click on it, and drag to the new location.
To select options right click on the system tray icon (it will look like the current actor) you will see the following options
| Priority | Explained below |
| Audio | Enables/disables audio - so you don't have 'marill marill' blasted through your speakers when listening to winamp |
| Help | This file! |
| About | software and actor information |
| Remove | remove the actor (Bye Bye) |
There are four priority states, used by Marrilmatic to save processing power:-
1. Activated
2. Bored
3. Sleep
4. Hibernate
When the actor is clicked upon, its priority is set to 'activated', this mode has the highest complexity, with sound, smooth movement and detailed animation - it also has the highest CPU usage! (approx. 10-20% on my PC)
after a period of time, the Actor becomes 'bored', since it has not been clicked on in a while it starts using more simple animations, and stops using sound, this uses less of processing power (approx. 5-10% on my PC), and ensures the actor will not keep making annoying noises for extended periods of time
after a longer period of time, the actor enters sleep mode, since the user has not activated it for a long while, it is assumed it is not really needed anymore, the 'animation' becomes extremely basic saving yet more processing power (usage: 0-5% on my PC)
after an even longer period the actor assumes the user has gone, fallen asleep, or generally doesn't care about it, it switches off it's events, and will not move until reactivated.
The times at which the state changes it configurable (see configuration above), you should also bear in mind that CPU usage is actor specific
if you want to get the actor moving again, left click on it, it'll become active immediately
Playlists allow you to simultaneously load multiple actors, to create a playlist make a text file with a .mpls extension, and insert lines with the paths of the actors, e.g.:
|
c:\program files\marrilmatic\raichu\raichu-pikachu.mact |
double click on the playlist, or install it onto the start menu (via right-clicking)
Q: My actor stopped talking to me
A: The actor's priority has reduced, click on it and it will become more active
Q: The actor's movement has become less smooth
A: Probably because the actor has lost priority, click on it, and it will regain
priority, if your using a different actor, then that's probably just the way
it is!
Q: an error message occurred (file not found etc.)
A: assuming you haven't messed with the actor files (mact,mani,mrnd) there's
probably a bug, E-mail me with the actor's name, the error message, and any
other info you have and I will look into it. If this occurs during install,
check the folders were extracted from the zip file.
Q: My computer is slowing up badly
A: Buy a new computer! more seriously, if your loading multiple actors, then
don't, or set the initial priority to sleep or bored, if it's really bad, switch
of transparency and select override actor defaults (otherwise the actor may
ignore this)
Remember: marrilmatic is a novelty, you shouldn't be loading loads of actors
and then trying to do CPU intensive work.
Q: How do I create my own actor
A: With difficulty, it's not currently documented, you'll need to create new
bitmaps & sounds and change the .mact file, If you're looking to be a real
smartass then you'll need to mess with the animation scripts. If you're interested,
E-mail me and I'll start working on some documentation.
Q: An actor is supposed to be hibernating, but instead it's doing stuff!
A: The Actor is responding to another actor's DDE command
Marrilmatic was written by Keith Sear using Visual Basic 6
Comments, suggestions and problems should be E-mailled to kdwsear@hotmail.com