What is Kids World: Screen Saver Construction Set?

Kids World: Screen Saver Construction Set is exactly what it says it is: a sandbox for kids (and grownups too!) to create screensavers on their Mac.  The way it works is super simple: All you have to do is choose a background picture, drag and drop pre-animated "stamps" on it, add some text or draw anything you want and boom: An AfterDark or UnderWare screensaver file can be exported in just a mouse click!

See also: Amazing Animation

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The latest offering from Bit Jugglers — Kids World — isn’t just a screen saver; it’s a screen-saver construction set. Instead of providing you with the usual collection of colorful, witty screen-saver animations, Kids World provides a set of simple tools you use to design screen-saver modules. As its name suggests. Kids World is primarily for children — it features an uncomplicated, kid-friendly interface and simple, cartoon-like graphics — but adults too may find its build-your-own-screen-saver approach mildly addicting.

To create a Kids World document, you begin with a supplied backdrop: a grassy backyard, a prehistoric landscape, or one of several other choices. A richer selection would be nice. (Alternatively, you can use a plain black or white background or use the program’s painting tools to draw your own backdrop.) Once you’ve selected a background, you can decorate it by choosing from more than 200 stamps of objects, plants, animals, and characters. Applying the stamps is easy: you grab a stamp from the palette, drag it onto the backdrop, and click to apply it. Tools for moving, erasing, and horizontally flipping any of the stamps are also included.

Kids World provides a basic, unintimidating palette of painting tools, including a pencil; a paint bucket; line, oval, and rectangle tools; and a text tool. You also get a 36-color palette and 16 textures (such as brick and marble) that you can paint onto your scenes.

Kids World’s entertainment value emerges after you’ve created your picture. Many of the stamps are animated and include great sounds, so instead of a static painted scene you get a lively, noisy, animated sequence: rocket ships fly through space, pterodactyls screech and swoop over the landscape, chickens squawk and peck at the ground. (Don’t worry; you also have the option of turning off the sound.) Of course, you can mix stamps and backgrounds in any wacky combination you please. The sounds and animations are really quite clever, though you have to be careful about overdoing it; screen savers containing more than just a handful of animated stamps play back jerkily, especially on slower Macs.

To use your newly created screen-saver module, you save your work within Kids World and then open the UnderWare control panel included with the program. (You can also save your Kids World creations as After Dark modules.)

The Last Word Kids World’s animations could he more fluid, the graphics more sophisticated, and the painting tools more robust, but as a children’s program, it still succeeds. It’s easy to use, cleverly designed, and can keep kids busy for hours — which is more than you can say about most screen savers.

Schorr, Joseph. (March 1995). Kids World 1.01. Macworld. (pg. 83).

Download Kids World: Screen Saver Construction Set for Mac

Architecture

Motorola 68K

System Requirements

From Mac OS 7.0 up to Mac OS 9.2

Compatibility notes

Architecture: 68K (68020 or newer)

At least 3MB of free RAM (recommended 4MB)

Mac OS 7.x - Mac OS 9.2.2

 

 

Emulating this? It could probably run under: Basilisk II