I talked to milksama about it before submitting my first dynamic dream. I had a few dynamic dreams that were ports of XboxMediaCenter screensavers. Those were licensed under the GPL, which means you have to distribute the source code along the binaries.

I thought it was better to ask before releasing that source code. Milksama talked to Island Dog about it and he said that releasing dynamic dreams was OK, but that source code was not.

Loss of revenue can be an explanation, but given that Stardock hasn't released that many dynamic dreams, I'm not sure it's the main reason. As Zubaz said, PR and support costs probably are why Stardock hasn't released anything yet. Building a SDK and supporting it takes time and right now this time is better used adding features or fixing bugs with Vista.



Not to diminish what you have done, but getting the list of functions from the export list is only the first step. Getting the prototypes is the real problem. Doing it in a clean way while respecting the license took me a long time.

As for what I told you to do, I also suggested you could contact Stardock and ask them for the SDK (probably under NDA). Developping Direct3D-based screensavers is also an option. You can easily convert those to dynamic Dreams once the official SDK is out.

I hate to turn people down when they ask me for info. Like a lot of people, I would prefer things to be open, but in the end, it's their software and they can do whatever they want with it. They don't want everybody to have the info yet and I respect that decision.

Verry, very true.

Bah, too slow...

I did email stardock about getting a NDA, etc.
So... are you okay with any disassembly of your valentine32 dll?

Arggh I gotta be carefull what I put in these functions! Putting a Messagebox in the renderscene did NOT have good results...

6 months later...

Any replies from Stardock regarding the SDK? Any progress on dynamic dreams?

No ETA for an SDK at this time.

I don't know if anybody else has got dynamic dreams working, but I do have a few ready and waiting...

I don't think there are that many people willing to create dynamic dreams anyway (using them is easier )

Creating a GOOD dynamic dream is a pain in the ass.  A bad one still takes a lot of work.

As someone who has done a lot of bad ones, I can't agree more!

And I didn't have the DeskScapes devs to pester...

I never pestered!  He liked it.  I swear!  

Waiting on what? Are there any legal issues with releasing them? I'm getting tired of Desktop Earth already

No legal issue. Just my word.

A lot of those dreams are ports from Xbox Media Center screensavers and those are under the GPL, which obliges you to distribute the source if you redistribute a modified version.
I was asked not to distribute source code for the time being.

I see. Mind if I bump this thread in another 6 months time?

If you want to create dynamic dreams, you can always contact Stardock and ask for the SDK. They might give you access to it under NDA if you can demonstrate that you know what're doing (ie. you know DirectX & how to program in C++). I don't know if they will allow you to redistribute your works, but at least this will allow you to play with it.

Since I did everything independently I didn't have to sign any evil NDA
I might release my shader dream next month or so. It doesn't do much (just loads a few textures and run an user selected shader), but that way you can write your own shaders. Not the real deal, but better than nothing.