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Screen Mate 1.0 Help
Sheep is the
English language version of a Japanese "screen mate" program widely
distributed in the 1990s.
Introduction...
What is Sheep?
Background Information
Copyright Information
How To...
Start Sheep
Run Multiple Instances...
Commands...
Options
Debug Window
Close Program
Hot Tip
Sheep came out during the days of 16-bit Windows, but it also
runs on 32-bit as well as in emulators on 64-bit machines or even on
iDevices.
What is Sheep?
Sheep is a
"Screen Mate" program, which runs in the background or along side of
whatever you're doing. Unlike screensavers that stop working as soon
as you click or move your mouse or press a key, a "Screen Mate"
program continues to run, keeping you company while you work.
Sheep wonder around, run, sneeze, eat flowers, leap through the air,
climb around on your windows, do handstands, bounce, and a whole lot
more! You can run one single instance of Sheep or
run multiple instances
simultaneously.
Trivia
Sheep may have been first in the hugely successful field of "screen
mate" programs, but sadly the cute little programs quickly become a
vehicle of choice for delivering malware and were quickly abandoned
by many users as (sometimes) completely unsubstantiated rumors
spread.
Background Information
Sheep is an English language version of a program originally written
for the Japanese market.
Sheep goes by several names including:
-
Sheep
-
Scmpoo
-
Screen Mate Poo
-
Screen Mate 1.0
You get the
idea...
Trivia
There is a 2005 version of the Sheep program touted on Wiki called eSheep that has the help button completely missing and the copyright
information actually overwritten. I do not recommend that one due to the
disrespect for the copyright information.
Copyright Information
The Sheep program is based on the work of Japanese animator
Tatsutoshi Nomura's 1994 "Stray Sheep" series of five-minute
animation shorts that were shown at midnight on the
Fuji
Television network in Japan. A series of books followed from Mr.
Nomura a decade later as well as other merchandise including
Playstation games.
Trivia
Village Center, Inc. engaged in an online campaign to stop the
digital sharing of the Sheep program but the wildly popular program
was already readily available around the world, and still is to this
day. The same cannot be said of Village Center, Inc. who apparently
no longer maintain any online presence as of 2010.
Start Sheep
If you're like me, you're probably running Sheep in your retro
Windows environment inside an emulator, so hopefully you made a program icon for Sheep and it's sitting in one
of your icon groups in Program Manager. Simply double-click to start
and you'll see a sheep enter your screen and start going about his
virtual life antics.
He may be joined or chased around by a black sheep, or even a UFO.
You never know, so keep watching!
Trivia
The yellow sheep with the purple horns is named Poe and the black
sheep with the little ears is named Merry.
Run Multiple Instances
You can run up to 9 instances of Sheep
To run multiple instances of Sheep, after starting one, return to
your icon in Program Manager, Start menu item or EXE in File
Explorer and double-click your Sheep icon to start the program
again. You can do this up to 9 times and they'll all run reasonably
well depending on how much processing power you have available.
Once you've got up to 9 sheep running around, you will really have
your hands full keeping track of all the antics they'll get up to!
Options
To access Sheep Options, double-click a sheep. You have to
double-click each one individually as they are all separate programs
running with their own options each.
The options are:
Sound - toggles sound on/off
Alarm - toggles hourly alarm
on/off (Poe Baa repeatedly to let you know the hour mark has been
reached)
No Sleep - toggles sheep
sleeping mode on/off
G-Force - toggles gravity on/off
so they can either walk all over the screen, or they'll fall and
bounce on the first thing that they can stand and walk around on.
The buttons are:
OK sets the options of your
choice
Cancel closes the options window
without making any changes
Help opens the help file ONLY
safely available from here.
Remove ends the Sheep program
Debug Window
To access the debug window (and all the sheep actions) hold down
CTRL+SHIFT and double-click the
sheep. This can be a bit tricky if they're running around at the
time, but you can usually get them to sit still long enough to do it
if you pick them up and place them somewhere.
Once you double-click on the sheep, the
Debug Window opens, where you can click each radio button
to see the sheep do the actions of your choice on demand. You can
also move the sheep around in the desired direction with the
directional buttons.
When you're done looking at actions simply click OK to close
the Debug Window.
Close Program
To close or end the Sheep program immediately,
double-RIGHT click on the sheep. Also you can
double-click the sheep and click the REMOVE button.
You have to double-click (right or left) each individual sheep on
your desktop. If you can't find them all, you may want to hold down
the ALT key and tap the
TAB key to cycle through your
running programs until you get to the one you want and then release
the keys to switch to it. Alternatively, you can press
CTRL+ALT+DEL to bring up Task
Manager to see how many more are running and switch to them or shut
them down from there. You can make an icon to run the Task Manager
instead of using the 3-finger method - just link to taskman in the
windows directory.
Your Options settings on the last running Sheep instance will remain
in effect for the next time you start up sheep, which is a nice
touch. |
