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ASCII Skyline - a terminal-based recreation of an old screensaver I loved as a kid (lemm.ee)
submitted 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) by whelk@lemm.ee to c/programming@programming.dev
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I couldn't sleep last night and ended up working on a terminal-based recreation of the old Starry Skyline screensaver we had on our computers when I was a kid (part of the After Dark suite of screensavers). It's been a lot of fun to work on and I'm enjoying thinking of what else I can add to it beyond the simple office windows and stars. I just got finished adding fireworks and I'm real pleased with how they turned out.

https://github.com/Whelk/asciiskyline

This is my first time working with curses so it's serving as a useful learning experience. Hoping to throw together some TUI utilities once I'm comfortable enough with it.

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[-] Mikelius@lemmy.ml 11 points 9 hours ago

Dang, talk about flashbacks I didn't expect. Nicely done!

Another screensaver I miss and would actually put on my machine if I could... Johnny Castaway.

[-] AlecSadler@sh.itjust.works 5 points 9 hours ago

๐Ÿ

[-] xodoh74984@lemmy.world 4 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 52 minutes ago)

I love this. I think I'm one night away from turning it into screensaver to pair with Chicago95, a la

https://alvinalexander.com/python/python-screensaver-xscreensaver-linux/

[-] whelk@lemm.ee 3 points 9 hours ago

Glad you like it. I'm trying to figure out if I can get it to function as a screensaver using xautolock. I just need to figure out how to get it to fullscreen the new terminal window opened by my bash script before running asciiskyline.

[-] tal@lemmy.today 5 points 9 hours ago

I'm not sure how actually practical compared to fun screensavers were in the CRT era, but in theory, their practical side is at least somewhat back.

The original idea was that you don't want the same phosphors to be illuminated all the time, or that breaks them down a bit more than those that aren't, and reduces their brightness; you get burn-in.

LCD displays aren't really affected by this. The LCD elements don't decay from being in on or off mode, and the backlight, which does decay, (usually) covers the whole screen, so the whole screen decays evenly.

But OLED displays do have the ability to get burn-in again, since the LED elements are per pixel, and the LEDs decay with power-on time.

[-] whelk@lemm.ee 3 points 9 hours ago

Yep, I'm in it for the fun.

[-] tal@lemmy.today 3 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

See also: https://github.com/lropero/starry-night

Looks like this guy did some others:

https://github.com/bryanbraun/after-dark-css

[-] whelk@lemm.ee 3 points 9 hours ago

Thanks, those are pretty awesome. Glad I'm not the only one overly nostalgic for these old screensavers. Looks like I misremembered the name though, I'll have to update my documentation.

this post was submitted on 18 May 2025
115 points (100.0% liked)

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