Search Mac Software Downloads
|
DESCRIPTION
Electric Sheep is a screensaver that owes its name to Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. It realizes the collective dream of sleeping computers from all over the internet.

When the screen-saver is activated, the screen goes black and an animated 'sheep' appears [note: sheep = beautiful, fractal based, mpeg2 compressed animations- this does not put hopping sheep all over your screen].. Behind the scenes, the screen-saver contacts a server and joins the parallel computation of new sheep. Samples are available.

Every fifteen minutes 24/7 a new sheep is born and distributed to all clients for display. Each sheep is an animated fractal flame.

WHAT'S NEW
Version 2.7: Compared to 2.6, this version has a more expressive visual language, higher resolution (double the pixels per sheep), no periodic stuttering, a better codec (x264), and a dynamic filter to smooth out the dust. And we have a new server with much more capacity (thanks dvlabs).
REQUIREMENTS
Mac OS X 10.3 or later.

Bookmark and Share

SCREENSHOT

Developer:Scott Draves
Downloads:104,066
  - Version d/l:9,812
Utilities:Screen Savers
License:Free
Date:01 May 2009
Platform:PPC/Intel
OTHER PEOPLE SUGGEST
Suggest something else:
Electric Sheep User Reviews (37 posts)Write A Review
sort: smiles | time
Oct 3 2009

FERVID  I'm probably one of the few people that's actually disappointed with this new version. I prefer to have the screensaver on half size (ie in the middle of the screen), but it seems you cannot do this in the new version. Am I missing something completely obvious in the settings?  
(Version 2.7b15a)

praisebury
0
[ Reply ]
Sep 1 2009

MABOROSHI  Please fix this for Snow Leopard! I love this screen saver!  
(Version 2.7b15a)

praisebury
+2
[ 3 Replies - Reply ]
Replies:
Sep 14 2009

WOODEN BRAIN CONCEPTS  Yes, please very much. ;-)  
(Version 2.7b15a)

praisebury
0
Sep 14 2009

MABOROSHI  I guess they forgot to update MU, but if you go to their site there is a new SL compatible version up!

http://community.electricsheep.org/download

Woo hoo!  
(Version 2.7b15a)

praisebury
0
Sep 14 2009

WOODEN BRAIN CONCEPTS  Thanks, I just went there myself, and got the update, but it still says it can't be used on this computer. A bit baffled because even older screen savers, including the old version of Electric Sheep, work as-is on my intel laptop also running 10.6.1. But this is not specific to Electric Sheep -- same story also with other supposedly SL compatible screen savers, such as Euphoria 10.2.

Since this is OT, if anyone else is having general issues (or better yet, knows the solution), try looking at this thread:

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10210603#10210603  
(Version 2.7b15a)

praisebury
0

Aug 15 2009

LEE123  They have the crasher fix.   
(Version 2.7b15a)

praisebury
0
[ Reply ]
May 2 2009

FYREFLYE  Worked beautifully on OS 10.4.11; crashes on opening with 10.5.6  
(Version 2.7b15a)

praisebury
0
[ Reply ]
May 2 2009
****.

SIDDHARTHA  Fantastic screensaver-one of the best!

Only problem-I wish that it would work on 2 screens-I have 2 screens, and one is simply blank while the screensaver runs.

Would be great if it would span the screens, or run separately on both (even mirror would be nice)  
(Version 2.7b15a)

praisebury
0
[ Reply ]
May 1 2009

MACROB  Ok. I removed the .saver file and the folders in application support.

I re-downloaded and installed again, and it seems to work fine.  
(Version 2.7b15a)

praisebury
0
[ Reply ]
May 1 2009
*****

THUS.SPAKE.Z  As far as screensavers/visualisers go, Electric Sheep is, IMO, in the same league as the wonderful G-Force; both render some incredibly beautiful and breathtaking imagery.

What E.S. lacks, however, is method to capture screenshots, which G-Force already has.

E.S. sorely needs that feature.

I think that it would be a very interesting collaboration for the developers of both E.S. and G-Force to work together and combine techniques.

Anyway, been using E.S. for some time now and loving it. In light of the apparent glitches with E.S. 2.7b15, I'll stick with version 2.6 for now and wait for the beta to evolve into a stable version.  
(Version 2.7b15)

praisebury
0
[ Reply ]
May 1 2009

PETER DA SILVA  IMPORTANT NOTE:

From the Electric Sheep website...

Before the new hotfix is out. If you have a crash running screensaver just after installation of b15, please try the following:

After installation, check if all folders on the path "~/Library/Application Support/ElectricSheep/content" exist. If not, please recreate those missing manually.

Or just launch this in Terminal:

cd ~;mkdir -p "`pwd`/Library/Application Support/ElectricSheep/content";cd -

When all folders are created, the screen saver should not crash anymore.

I am working on the patch and b15a should be out soon.

If it still crash for you, please let me know.

Thanks,

Daniel  
(Version 2.7b15)

praisebury
0
[ 1 Reply - Reply ]
Replies:
May 1 2009

PETER DA SILVA  Now it says "error connecting to server". Bother.  
(Version 2.7b15)

praisebury
0

May 1 2009

MACROB  2.7 crashes system prefs as soon as it's selected.

MacPro 10.5.6, 13 GB ram, and I've never used this before, so I don't have the old version still installed.  
(Version 2.7b15)

praisebury
0
[ 3 Replies - Reply ]
Replies:
May 1 2009

GAZMAN  Ditto.  
(Version 2.7b15)

praisebury
0
May 1 2009

HAWAIIAN STARMAN  Same crash here. I posted a crash report at the developer's site.  
(Version 2.7b15)

praisebury
0
May 1 2009

PETER DA SILVA  Same here, Mac mini G4, 10.5.6  
(Version 2.7b15)

praisebury
0

Apr 24 2009

SPOTSPOT  The version listed here no longer exists. The 2.6 server is being shut down. You must upgrade to 2.7, see http://community.electricsheep.org/node/509

or just

http://electricsheep.org for the latest.

--Spot (the developer)  
(Version 2.6.9)

praisebury
0
[ 1 Reply - Reply ]
Replies:
Apr 24 2009

SPOTSPOT  btw, thank you for the very kind comments below :)  
(Version 2.6.9)

praisebury
0

View all 37 posts >>