The Most Captivating Screensaver... Ever | Nostalgia Nerd

[Music] [Applause] here's the desktop of my home editing pc it's all very standard 4k monitor chaotic desktop nasa photo for the background squarespace sponsor notification for this video but what happens if we wait well it just turns off power saving features kick in and everything goes blank that's great it saves electricity it saves waste but it lacks the excitement of this remember when screensavers were all the rage i used to be as excited about getting a new screensaver as i would be about a new game a really good one could mesmerize me for hours these graphical showcases might have started off life as an actual valid way of preventing nasty screen burn on older crt monitors particularly monochrome variants where the phosphor layer responsible for luminance was degraded by electrons repeatedly striking it but with later crts it was less of an issue and so combined with increased screen colours processor power and the ever increasing need to expand profits and to sell to consumers more wild and interesting variants of the screensaver [Music] emerge [Music] jolly castaway was for me the pinnacle of screensavers it felt more like an entire adventure rather than a program designed to protect your monitor and really it was released by sierra in big box form at the start of 1992 the program was packaged under the screen antics brand the thought being that this would perhaps be the first in a line of other similar screen savers the actual program had been developed at jeff tunnell productions jeff tunnell being the founder of developer and self-publisher dynamics which had been bought as a sierra subsidiary in 1990 dynamics had previously been responsible for titles such as project fire start for the commodore 64 and arctic fox on the amiga both good titles which laid foundations for games such as the adventures of willy beamish and heart of china whilst dynamics continued on this straight path but whilst still under their aegis jeff tunnel productions would diverge to produce somewhat more abstract titles such as the incredible machine and of course a title known as the castaway that would become johnny castaway before publication by sierra online under both their dynamics and sierra brands it's also sold under the title of the adventures of johnny castaway the johnny inclusion likely a nod to johnny hart the american cartoonist whose style johnny castaway seems to heavily pay tribute to the original advert for jeff tunnel productions discusses both jeff's incredible machine and the adventures of johnny castaway and if you look closely you'll notice some clearly mocked up artwork [Music] i don't have the big box form myself but i do have this the sierra family fun pack three great games for one great price that includes conquests of the longbow the legend of robin hood goblins hoyle boyle book of games volume 3 and if you look to be lower right a free screen saver johnny castaway now this isn't a particularly common bundle in fact i don't think it was ever released in europe or the uk i had this one shipped from the united states and even then it's not easy to find robin hood is an excellent adventure game designed by christy marks goblins with no less than three eyes is a puzzle adventure which was received reasonably on its 1991 release whilst hoyle's book of games is as you'd expect it's dandy if you want to play backgammon or snakes and ladders against some rather appropriate sierra game characters but the bonus freebie is still the highlight for me and i would likely have snapped this compendium up had i had the chance on release specified requirements for most are a 286 or better but this is upped to a 386 sx for screen antics as it runs only under windows 3.1 enhanced mode inside is a wedge of three and a half inch floppy disks of which a single contains screen antics there's a bundle of game sheets manuals as well as some marketing materials and a registration card but johnny castaway boils down to that single floppy and a four-page leaflet to get us started although i suspect most of us received a copy like this good old copied floppy memories of piracy to be fair sierra did put it online for free download sometime in the late 90s the manual gives us only basic information but we've got the names of the people behind it on the back which is nice anyway i'd best find a computer to stick this floppy into [Music] but before we wade in let's talk about sponsor squarespace and how just like screen antics it can turn something drab into something wondrous as well as all these simple to use elements squarespace is known for like quick custom websites seamless seo and mobile integration you can even drop in animation elements and really make your site pop so if you want your site to be seen by more than the population of a desert island head to squarespace.com nostalgia nerd to get started with 10 off your first website or custom domain when you're ready [Music] ah my trusty compact pro linear dx4 machine never lets me down handily this already has windows 3.11 installed along with all the bog standard screen savers so let's get cast away onto it and elevate this platform to another level i've always appreciated that concatenation of screen and antique once the 1.3 megabyte setup is extracted and installed it takes us neatly to the desktop setup application from there we can configure some options such as setting a password the start of the day turning the background on and off or we can just dive straight in and test what we've got so here it is johnny castaway himself stranded on a tiny island with a single tree thankfully stocked a plenty with coconuts the character was actually created by dynamics designer sean byrd who wrote about it on his very 90s website the brief was to produce a character that was weathered but likable this is the concept drawing he came up with and really it didn't change from there in fact that drawing is included on the manual front cover along with a note that says stop everything only when you quit working do i have a chance to escape this forsaken island so please do it for me kill some time to save an old salt obviously being quite an early windows 3.1 third-party screensaver cast away actually runs in 16 color mode and you can see that reflected in the on-screen dithering but it's done in such a clever way that the illusion of more colors is always there [Music] but of course this is not a screen saver that's light on resources if you wanted to leave your 386 rendering an image or compiling a visual basic program you didn't want to have cast away as your screen saver as all this animation uses quite a few cpu cycles and memory which were both incredibly scarce at the time now day to day johnny will occupy himself with all sorts building a sandcastle fishing looking out for potential rescuers he knows what he's doing but this this was computer entertainment in the 90s if you didn't want to play a game but wanted some visual entertainment you'd fire johnny castaway up and just see what he was doing just sitting waiting for new scenes was both exciting and fascinating of course nowadays we just pop youtube on but back then there was no youtube computers could barely play a watchable video and so this was the pinnacle so although the on-screen actions look fairly random and in many ways they are it's also broken down into blocks lasting about five minutes after which the scene is redrawn usually with the island in a slightly different place and thereby conforming to its screen saving requirement within these blocks are various scenes selected at random in between scenes you'll see johnny walk behind the tree and it's at this point for any accessories he was holding or that remain on the beach are cleared this disappearance also allows johnny to introduce elements for the next scene for example a dirty great fishing rod will appear from the exiting side of the tree or a frantic dressing animation will occur before johnny strolls out wearing essential island jogging gear usually the block will end with a special scene of which there are nineteen this could be a shark wrenching him out to sea a group of pirates coming to terrorize for poor chap or a leisure boat cruising past which johnny takes the swift opportunity to join and get drunk on even a situation where johnny tries to rain dance and ends up naked as a tourist spectacle sometimes say one in 25 times you might also get a short special starting scene such as a seagull stealing clothes from a bathing johnny but most importantly on top of all this captivating viewing there's also a story that weaves its way throughout written by william archer with each episode appearing seamlessly at either the start or end of a block here's how the story goes spoiler alert day one a mermaid apparently named mary swims behind johnny whilst he's fishing he presumes it was a whopping fish and so heads across the island catching an old boot two johnny writes about his dire situation and chucks it in a bottle this is separate from his sos message that he writes nearly every day sometimes multiple times in a row day three a woman apparently named susie finds johnny's bottle and pictures a slightly different scene day four mary comes back and gives johnny a shell necklace he reciprocates with a titanic life ring which is actually set up in a previous random scene and then invites her for dinner which she gives the green light to you'll notice that johnny's raft is becoming more complete day five is exclusively at night time johnny has prepared dinner and they share some wine and a dance mary then leaves [Music] day six johnny writes another note to susie setting a time to meet or alluding to the fact that he'll be there soon clearly these bottled messages are a safer bet than my hermes day seven johnny's pleased his raft is complete mary comes back and after inquiring becomes upset at its purpose [Music] day eight johnny prepares to leave with i presume his jogging gear all packed up whilst the mermaid and shark rock up who now seem to be in a romantic situation day 9 johnny finally meets susie it's not exactly how either expected it [Music] day 10 johnny goes back to the office and realizes the island and mermaid were a better bet than his mountain of paperwork [Music] day 11 johnny goes back to the island and then we start all over again honestly you'd think he would have learnt the first time the full story is about six minutes long so if you want to see it uninterrupted there's a link to it on my extra channel below it's worth noting that outside of this story johnny just continues as normal on his island so what we're seeing could be interpreted as perhaps glimpses of the past if you like now these story parts can't be accessed simply by moving your computer's date on one day at a time screen antics is a bit more clever than that the actual day will only advance when part of the game's story has been played and the computer has progressed to another day so how does that work well if we take a look at the scrantic.ini file held in the windows directory we'll see numerous options some of which aren't even available in the settings menu such as removing the clouds and waves but the important things are num days and introduction these both start on one which tells the program that johnny is on his first day once day one of the story has run the introduction value will change to two this doesn't stop the story part from appearing further times that day but it does mean that if you run the screen saver on a different day screen antics will also advance for num days by one it determines this by checking the current date against the last run values held here the story progresses and the second day story can then play out and once it does the introduction will increment by another digit crucially because the story only plays say once in every 15 runs if it doesn't play during a particular day then the next time you run your computer the num days won't increment either this ensures that each part of the story is played sequentially you've just got to be there to see it you can tell you've got a story scene as this sound will play before it begins and if it's at the start of a block you'll often get this clock to indicate the passing of time but of course it's not always easy to catch these stories scenes i had to repeatedly run the screensaver and hope i would catch one if i did then i could record it and manually increment the num days before repeating for the next day but that doesn't always work and story parts 5 and 7 will only play at the end of a blog for these i had to leave johnny running for some time and hope the randomization landed in my favor to make it even more tricky part 5 will only play during the evening so remember those options well by default 9am is the start of johnny's day and that day will last for six hours so if the screensaver runs between 9am and 3pm you'll usually get a day situation if it runs after 3pm you'll get a night situation which lasts for 2 hours this covers your usual nine to five office hours just in case you you know you were using this screen saver in an actual office environment what this is very clearly an office anyway once that's accounted for i was able to get the entire story and once it had played out the ini files are automatically reset to one and we begin again by the way if you're curious as to what it looks like with the various options on or off here they are of course given screen antics is aware of the date it will also note special days christmas will show a christmas tree new years will show a banner the 15th to 17th of march will celebrate st patrick's day and there's even a pumpkin for halloween but johnny doesn't feel alive purely for these scripted elements it's the incredibly clever branching paths and perceived randomness of his day which does that so there are various points on the island where an invisible dice roll is made and the next action is chosen you can see him walking the same paths but at certain points on those paths an action is triggered he might go to sleep read a book go and get his fishing rod or perhaps shake the tree if he shakes the tree then we get another dice roll does the coconut bounce into the sea does it roll around the island then another dice roll does he eat it does he put it away these multiple branching paths are what make viewings so addictive you just don't know what's going to happen there are even multiple branching variations of these special end-of-block scenes and even reports of variations of the main storyline occurring much less frequently this variation even applies to his gasping sounds or mumbling sometimes the mumbling will repeat several times sometimes only once this is well it's the essence of life isn't it especially when you mix in the varying surroundings clouds waves even tide levels which expose more or less of the island but interestingly aside from all these standard actions and occurrences some owners reported some very rare and perhaps mysterious goings-on in and around jc's island the website johnnycastaway.com which has been operational since the 90s on and off has had people reporting strange activity since well since the internet began there are ghosts dotted about of an entire community who were once trying to work out just what was happening on this tiny strange island on the 18th of january 2003 roy daniel from texas reported that johnny was chasing down a coconut when a somewhat transparent johnny waded ashore they started fighting and johnny number one knocked down the ghostly johnny back into the water then an airplane entered a stage right johnny picked up the coconut and threw it causing the airplane to crash and the pilot to parachute into the sea end of sequence hallie porcus reported the same on the 26th of september 2003 i also saw the second johnny appear out of the sea only to get knocked back in by the first johnny i actually saw the plane before the second johnny i didn't see the coconut until the first johnny threw it up the plane the plane scene is an actual scene but the ghost johnny i have never personally witnessed maybe this was a glitch maybe something weirder is a play another roy reported i walked into the office and saw what appeared to be two silver balls or bowls one on each side of the palm tree then the scene ended i didn't get a good look before it went away this one doesn't appear to be part of any traditional scene i suspect if anything it was a graphical glitch or roy was high on lsd it's really difficult to know whether some of these occurrences were intentionally created by the developers or just glitches and ghosts in the code during my testing there was one part where a block of time continued for over twice its average length during this time johnny repeatedly dived from the top of the tree and was scored repeatedly although differently by the local wildlife for me there are two explanations for this the first is that computers are inherently bad at randomization the seed for creating a random number is usually derived from the computer's clock and sometimes this can lead to a situation where you get much higher odds for a particular outcome so maybe this is the natural outcome of that or maybe it's an intentional quirk of the coding which just adds to the wonder of johnny's world and captivates you to keep watching to find things that hasn't happened to any of your friends computers and that they likely won't believe you for anyway it's like a gambling addiction but you're gambling with your own time there are also more blatant bugs for instance sometimes when the pirate galleon departs a rectangle of graphical disorder is left behind sometimes johnny's fishing rod disappears before he can put it away and on my windows 3.11 install exiting the screensaver during a sound would throw a dll error with the last sound getting stuck in a loop but these feel like normal errors and they're far less mysterious than the other subtle things going on in johnny's little world sometimes i feel like johnny just doesn't want me to know he stands and he stares deep into my soul as quite unnerving maybe these secrets are best left undisturbed maybe this is where the real ark of the covenant is kept and oak island is just a damn decoy we will never know [Music] unfortunately as far as i'm aware johnny castaway was the lone installment in the screen antics series other screensaver programs entered the market and soon it was flooded with flying toasters and the like but i still think there would have been more than enough room to continue this incredible series [Music] even today there are people getting it to run on windows 10 on android phones or something based on it with plenty of in-game purchases even in standalone photo frame style setups and that's because well people grew attached to johnny this hapless bearded fellow had such a range of emotions and experiences that it was difficult to not feel connected to him having it run on your computer was like an old friend in the background going about his day just as you were and by the end of the day even though it was incredibly simple to activate him which was part of the appeal it often felt difficult to switch him off after all he's johnny castaway he's having a hard enough time as it is this was a program a passive adventure that was years ahead of its time it was a character like a sim which progressed through a story evolving randomly but also in a sequenced real-time representation that felt well he just felt alive no wonder so many including myself regarded as the best screensaver ever made thanks for watching until next time i've been nostalgia nerd [Applause] today [Music] [Music] [Music] uh [Music] you

Channel: Nostalgia Nerd

Views: 521,728

Keywords: johnny castaway, screensaver

Id: E5lxiTJGqHw

Length: 26min 34sec (1594 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 28 2021