I was playing with the AntMaze xscreensaver and I can see that this package that has not been maintained since 2005 is malfunctioned. I was expecting to find an interesting algorithm for traversing a maze and so I started mucking around with the source. I learned how the XML configuration files work and learned the appropriate methods to create a screensaver that could be used for OSX also.
I found these problems in the source:- Texture created incorrectly
- Ants positioned inside surfaces
- No algorithm at all for mazing
- Odd textures and lots of commented out code
All in all it is not bad, but it is not right and the snapshot is with changes I made and I may submit it for release with KDE, Gnome and wherever it might be used. If you compare the snapshot before I made changes you will see that shadows exist now and ants are not inside the surface of the material. I also changed the action of the ants to correspond to how an insect actually moves and it might be disturbing as it does seem like it could be confused with a real insect if I correct the texture and change the reflectivity and add a bit more complexity to the models.
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