Make Your Own Sprite Screensaver

What is a Sprite?

A sprite is an object—animated or static—that can move or remain still on screen. Sprites can bounce on edges, collide with other sprites, rotate, and even play associated sounds to create dynamic effects. This is the most common type of screensaver you can build in Axialis Screensaver Producer.

Why Make Sprite Screensavers?

• Branding: animate logos or mascots smoothly across one or multiple monitors.
• Expressive: combine motion, rotation, collisions, and sounds for playful or elegant visuals.
• Performance: the rendering engine is hardware-accelerated, so you can run many sprites while keeping smooth animation.

Creating the New Project

1. Go to File → New Screensaver Project.
2. Select Sprite-based Screensaver, then click Next.
3. Fill in Title, Description, Author, then click Next to create the project (it starts with a default gradient background).

Defining the Background

1. Right-click the background and choose Properties → Background tab.
2. Choose Image Wallpaper (Stretch / Center / Tile), a Gradient (vertical / horizontal / mirror), or a Solid color.
3. Tip: you can Drag & Drop wallpapers from the Librarian (Images → Backgrounds) for quick setup.

Adding a Static Sprite

1. Insert an image as a sprite: Home → Insert → Image Files (or drag & drop from the Librarian).
2. Right-click the sprite → Properties → set Type to Static (it may be animated but won’t move).

Adding a Moving Sprite

1. Right-click the sprite → Properties → choose a Type:
• Straight Line: constant speed; set horizontal/vertical speed.
• Bouncing on the bottom: ball-like bounce based on initial Y position.
2. In Motion Links, pick:
   • Pass over and over (wrap continuously),
   • Pass randomly (with delays), or
   • Bouncing on edges (pool-table style).
3. Adjust Speed (horizontal/vertical, −500 … +500).

Adding an Animated Sprite

Use an animated file (Animated GIF or FLI/FLC) or a filmstrip image (BMP/PNG with frames stacked vertically). If auto-detected frames are wrong, specify the frame count; set Animation speed (1=slow … 50=fast) on the Animation tab.

Using Collision Effects

1. To make sprites collide, give them the same Collision level (Sounds & Collisions tab).
2. Choose the response:
   • Change path — elastic physics (based on mass/size and speed),
   • Keep path — maintains trajectory (non-physical, can accelerate small objects).
3. Optional: assign collision sounds (WAV) for object-object or screen-edge impacts.

Defining Background Music

1. Right-click background → Properties → Background Music tab.
2. Pick a file: MID (recommended, can play with collision sounds), MP3/MOD (quality but cannot play with collision sounds), or WAV (large).
3. Optionally embed the music in the project (increases .SSP size) and enable Restart to loop.