After Dark Modern

Run real After Dark 68K and PowerPC screensaver modules under CPU emulation on modern macOS. Two hosts (engine/) execute the original module code against a software QuickDraw and stream frames; a SwiftUI app and a real macOS screen saver present them.

Prebuilt downloads are on the Releases page — see INSTALL.md in the zip (or docs/INSTALL.md). To build from source, read on.

Everything in this repo is original work. No copyrighted After Dark bits are included — first run downloads them from archive.org (you're responsible for sourcing After Dark legally). The CPU emulators come from resource_dasm, cloned separately.

Layout

• engine/ — the emulation hosts (adhost68k.cc, adhost.cc) and the software QuickDraw (ad_toolbox.{cc,hh})
• tools/ — utilities: adfetch/ downloads/extracts the original assets (checksum-verified); the rest are debugging/validation aids
• app/AfterDark/ — the app, plus adrender (headless renderer/verifier)
• app/saver/ — AfterDark.saver, the installable macOS screen saver
• docs/RESEARCH.md — the reverse-engineering log (what the hosts expect and why)

Build & run

# dependencies: the CPU emulators (to test a rewrite, use your fork/branch here)
git clone https://github.com/fuzziqersoftware/phosg         third_party/phosg
git clone https://github.com/fuzziqersoftware/resource_dasm third_party/resource_dasm
cd third_party/phosg && cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=../local \
  && cmake --build build -j8 && cmake --install build && cd ../..
cd third_party/resource_dasm && cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=../local \
  && cmake --build build --target resource_file m68kdasm resource_dasm -j8 && cd ../..

# hosts
cd engine && make adhost adhost68k && cd ..

# app — first launch shows the asset-download gate, then the module picker
cd app/AfterDark && swift run AfterDark

# screen saver bundle (install by double-clicking AfterDark.saver)
bash app/saver/build_saver.sh

The .app bundle is self-contained — make_app.sh builds the extraction tools (via tools/get_extractors.sh) and bundles them, so a distributed app needs no Homebrew. For swift run / headless work, either run tools/get_extractors.sh once or brew install unar hfsutils; tools/adfetch/adfetch.sh does the same download the app does.

License

Original code under LICENSE. resource_dasm/phosg have their own licenses. The downloaded After Dark assets remain © their rightsholders.