A screensaver that emulates the moving star field background from Mega Man 2's boss introduction screen.

NOTE: This repo was entirely vibe coded with Claude Code (including this README, except for this line and the screenshot below). The Claude conversations are in the commit log.

• Authentic NES aesthetic: 10x10 pixel scaling for that chunky retro look
• Three star sizes: Small (1x1), medium (2x2), and large (4x4 plus-shaped) stars
• Smooth scrolling: Different speeds for depth parallax effect
• Hardware accelerated: OpenGL with instanced rendering
• Vsync support: Tear-free rendering at 144Hz
• Automatic activation: Monitors system idle time and activates after 5 minutes
• Auto-restart: Returns to monitoring after dismissal

• Resolution: 4K (3840x2160)
• Logical resolution: 384x216 logical pixels
• Star counts: ~64 small, ~32 medium, ~16 large stars
• Idle timeout: 5 minutes
• Speeds:
  • Small stars: 32 seconds to cross screen
  • Medium stars: 8 seconds to cross screen
  • Large stars: 2 seconds to cross screen

make

./megaman_stars

The program will monitor keyboard and mouse activity in the background. After 5 minutes of idle time, the screensaver will activate automatically. Press any key or move the mouse to dismiss the screensaver, and it will return to monitoring.

Press Ctrl+C to exit the program entirely.

• X11 development libraries
• XScreenSaver extension library (libXss)
• OpenGL development libraries
• GCC or compatible C compiler

On Debian/Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install libx11-dev libxss-dev libgl1-mesa-dev

On Fedora/RHEL:

sudo dnf install libX11-devel libXScrnSaver-devel mesa-libGL-devel