Version 1.3 for MAC OS X 10.3 or higher - 10/12/2008
By
Robert Bennett

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Click here to download!

REGISTER NOW FOR JUST US$9.95!

It takes endless hours of work to produce nifty 3D screen savers at the high quality you have come to expect from Useless Creations, and all we ask in return is a very small fee! Compare it to other places, and we're sure you'll agree that you get far more bang for your buck right here! Without your support we wouldn't be able to keep bringing you screensaver after nifty screensaver, which includes our cool free offerings as well as our even cooler shareware stuff. So as long as you keep supporting our work, we'll keep working tirelessly to help you avoid doing any work by watching your screen for hours on end!

When you register A Very 3D Christmas Screen Saver, you get:
The full, registered, unrestricted version of the niftiest 3D Christmas screensaver on the planet!
Endless Christmas Fun! Watch Santa cruise round in his sleigh delivering presents. He even lands and climbs down chimneys!
Elf Slave Labour! Elves are overworked and underpaid, but they don't mind! Watch the elf do all the hard work deliverying presents!
Over 50 Christmas songs! Not insane yet? Wait til you've heard the over 50 Christmas tunes that play in the background! You'll soon be nuttier than a Christmas cake!
No nag screens! Nothing pops up at the start, nothing pops up in the corners, nothing pops up at all. All you get is the action!
But more importantly, you'll help support Useless Creations, which means I'll be able to keep developing nifty screen savers for Mac OS X!

All this for just US$9.95! How can you resist?!

Click here for all the details.

To get to the screen saver settings go to System Preferences, then Desktop and Screen Saver, select this screensaver and slick on Options.

The following configuration options are available. (It is recommended that you play with the options to find what runs best on your Mac and what you think looks best):

Play Selected Background Music: Turn this on if you want to have Christmas carols playing in the background, then select which music you want from the drop down box on the right. You can also select to have the screen saver play the tunes at random. There are over 50 Christmas tunes to choose from or have playing at random!
Snow Density: Lets you decide how snowy it is. Turning this down may speed things up on slower machines.
Star Density: Sets how many stars are in the sky. Turning this down may speed things up on slower machines.
House Density: Sets how far apart the houses are that go past as Santa flies over. Lower house density may speed things up on slower machines.
Number of Reindeer: Here you can set how many reindeers are pulling Santa's sleigh tonight. Less reindeer can speed things up on slower machines.
Display Countdown To Christmas: This will display a countdown to Christmas day, so you know how long til Santa arrives!
Display Smoking Chimneys: With this turned on smoke will rise from some of the house's chimneys. Turning this off may speed things up on slower machines.
Display Trees: Sets if you want trees to be shown or not. Turning this off can speed things up on slower machines.
Display Sparkle Trails: Turns sparkles coming off the sleigh and reindeers hooves on and off.

Ack! Is it that time of year already?? Where you have to elbow old ladies to get near the checkout at the local gift emporium??

Well, no not quite. As I write this it's still October, but the shops around here have had their Christmas stuff for sale for about 6 months now so Christmas must actually be getting a little closer.

I was watching the previous version of this screen saver, and altho I still love to watch it, I thought that maybe the graphics could do with a polish. It looked great when I first made it way back when, but not quite as good now. So before I started porting it to work on the Mac, I decided to update the graphics. I've remade Santa, the Elf, the Sleigh and all the houses have been replaced. I basically left the Reindeer alone because I thought they looked pretty cool already. So now I think the whole thing looks a lot niftier than before, but the general feel is the same, which I liked.

So for those of you unfamiliar with it, this screen saver was first released back in (I think from memory) the year 2000. Back then, the graphics were crap, altho at the time I liked it. Then I remade it a few years ago (2002?) from scratch and the whole thing was so much better. So this is the 3rd time I've done a major sort of update, an it's the first time it's been available under both Windows and Mac OS X so even more people can enjoy the Christmas spirit!

The elf still does all the work throwing the presents down the chimneys. He really needs to join a union. And there's no over 50 Christmas tunes as background music. In general, this is one of my favourite, so I hope you all get a kick out of it.

As always, if you spot any bugs let me know.

Merry Christmas and enjoy!

v1.3 - 10th December, 2008 - Update
Updates to allow for denser snow storms and brighter sparkle trails.
Updates / optimizations.
More Christmas cheer!

v1.2 - 28th November, 2007 - Update
Updates and a few bug fixes for running under Leopard!

v1.1 - 15th August, 2006 - Update
Updated to be a Universal Binary which should work on all Mac's running 10.3 or higher.
Fixed a problem with not drawing the entire scene on multiple screen systems.

v1.0 - 1st November, 2005 - Original Release
Realtime 3D display featuring Santa, his Reindeer, and a hard working Elf. They fly through the air throwing presents down chimneys and randomly stop at houses while Santa climbs down the chimney.
Over 50 Christmas tunes as background music.
Countdown timer to Christmas day.
Heaps of other options to customize it to your liking.