Bring on the Sixth

A great bank holiday weekend for my PS3 gaming and also the development of AutoWallpaper 4. Beta 6 has been sent to the beta testers and so far the reports are good. Betas 1 through 6 have seen a lot of tweaks and corrections being made, from a bug in the no repeats code to an improvement to the upgrader. Things are certainly looking promising for a release in September. But wait there's more good news… I've been putting the finishing touches on the AutoWallpaper 4 Screensaver module. This time the module/addon is multi-monitor compatible. Yup, now rather than blanking out every monitor except the primary you can enjoy a slideshow of your categories on all monitors. Because of this change the transitions from AutoWallpaper 3.5 have all had to be replaced. This is mainly due to the difficulties of handling three seperate or one very large 3D canvas, so, the transitions are now more in keeping with a 2D animation application. However rather than the 12 or so transitions of the original the current build of version 2 holds a whopping 26 transitions including: Slide Up, Switheroo Up Down, Cascade Down, Random lines, Slide Over Left. And I will add more if I can think of some <img src="https://www.arsoftware.co.uk/blog/templates/default/img/emoticons/smile.png" alt=":-)" style="display: inline; vertical-align: bottom;" class="emoticon" /> Screensaver Addon 2 will be free to those with a valid screensaver or plus licence, but it is worth mentioning that they are NOT compatible with each other. If you want to continue using screensaver module 1 you will have to run AutoWallpaper 3.5 and 4 side by side. As for the PS3 gaming bonaza, I managed to complete 3 games over the bank holiday weekend and get to the penultimate stage of Lair. Ratchet And Clank: Tools of Destruction, and, the recently released PSN title Ratchet and Clank: Quest for Booty were both completed. Great 3D platformers with some great use of humour. Time Shift, a first person shooter where you have the ability to pause and rewind time, was also completed. The game seems to end with a Paradox cliff hanger suggesting that there may be a sequel planned. Lair, got quite a few complaints in the magazines regarding its controls but personally I think the only disapointment with the game is the amount of slowdown when the explosions are really in your face. Otherwise I find the game to be excellent, and who wouldn't like controling a dragon with the SIXAXIS?<br />