After Dark 4.0 in Win 11: updates, control panel and throttling

Oh man it's time to revisit After Dark again.

For those who don't know, I'm a long time After Dark enthusiast, and I keep looking for ways to preserve this treasure from the past in modern OS. I already wrote 2 entries about installing AD4.0 on modern systems:

2017: AD4 in Win 7/10

2021: AD4 in Win 10 troubleshooting

When I check those guides again, some of the instructions went into obscurity -- not that the solutions do not work anymore, but the sites containing solutions were gone. Videos on YouTube became private, and the important bat file that replaces the After Dark control panel is no longer accessible.

It's time to update the guide with the assistance of LLMs.

Installation

1) Install with Windows 95 compatibility mode. Do not try with later compatibility like Windows XP sp2/3. 

The reason is simple: AD4 is simply too old to even adapt the NT architecture. If you install using more recent compatibility mode several errors would occur: estimate memory needed is shown at zero, a few files couldn't be written...but there are more deeper problems like registry not properly edited and so on.

2) Move AfterDark.scr from SysWOW64 back to System32.

Same problem occurred when you leave it in SysWOW64.

3) Fix the path to screensaver at HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Control Panel/Desktop.

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These are the known steps and has never changed since we are still in Windows 11. Two problems remained:

4) How to change the AfterDark screensaver settings?

In my previous guide I attached a YouTube video with a .bat file, but that video went private. Instead I found another video teaching you how to install AD4, with a bat file that looks very similar (with more functions), but I am not sure if this is the exact same author, so use it with caution. (And since this is somewhat accessible on YouTube I am not going to post that old .bat file directly.)

There is also an alternative: someone called rafaga12 made an after dark settings panel compatible with Win 10 and 11, probably worth a try as well.

5) Why is it so CPU demanding as a software 30 years ago?

I have asked a number of developers similar questions under different contexts, but I finally realized I might have asked the wrong person. I should ask OS engineers instead of software developers.

The reason is simple: how CPU works differently 30 years ago and now. Quoting what I got:

Back in the 1990s, multitasking was primitive. Many programs were written with "busy loops"—code that constantly asks the CPU, "Is it time to draw the next frame yet? How about now? Now?"

Then: On a 33MHz processor, that loop took up 100% of the CPU, but the CPU was already "on" and didn't have complex power-saving states.

Now: Modern CPUs are designed to "race to sleep." They want to finish a task in microseconds and then shut down parts of the chip to save power. A 30-year-old screensaver that constantly polls the CPU prevents the processor from entering its C-States (deep sleep modes). Because the CPU can't fully sleep, it stays warm, and the fans stay on.

This is likely the main reason -- the resources needed to render or fit compatibility is minimal when you are using a computer 30 years later. So the solution is also simple: we just need to throttle the program for most of the time. It would still run fine even when it was throttled 95% of the time or even more.

I tried the utility called Battle Encoder Shirase -- it worked so far and the fan went quiet when the screensaver turns on, but I need more time before the conclusion can be made.

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It's hard to imagine that we are already in the unwelcomed operating system Windows 11 for a few years. So much have happened in these 4 years, the resources shifted, and the appearance of language models greatly helped solving the problem. I'm even looking for more independent projects, like surviving old IDE into 64-bit compatible modern IDE.

Well I hope you would find this useful. If it becomes outdated again don't hesitate to notify me :)

13/5/2026: A tale of two games

It all started with a screenshot.

It was me ranking 152 in tier 19 inside of the FEH arena. This is nothing special -- I have given up fighting in arena for a very long time since it was heavily biased to merged units. At a point around duel skill lv4 was just out, when some grail units were score comparable with those premium units, I actually tried hard spending up to 50 swords(?) (that arena ticket thing) to get the best possible scores. It actually worked and I ended with a few arena crowns. But then I quickly stopped doing that since it's too tiring and gruesome. I even stopped caring about staying at least above tier 18. All I do is to come up with a team with the bonus unit and hope for 5 auto wins at easy.

What's different is the number 2857: this is a special number to me, and I am even surprised to find that this is the first time I talked about it here. It is special in many ways: it's the decimal approximation of 2/7 (that's why the cut off is beautifully at 1000), it's room number in tenhou where I played 10000+ games in, it's the osu! map ID of a classic song...but here, this is what attracted me to write something about it.

I wrote about proportions of players in different tiers in 2017, then updated when they added tier 21 (crown tier) in 2018 although the distribution stays almost the same with the update. If we know the approximate proportion of players in each tier, we can use it to approximate the number of active players around.

According to what I calculated, tier 19 contains about 14% of players. With 2857 players in tier 19, that is ~20k active players in total. And what did we have in the past? Quoting what I wrote: 

What is surprising is that they did not make the top tier unreachable -- tier 20 contains top 7% of the players... This is quite generous --- or overly generous. Consider that there are around 100k active players in the pool currently...

That is a 80% drop in active players!!!

Well that's not a big shock after all, as we all know the game's been declining since the wave of three houses resides. We know that from the number of votes in the choose your hero event, sensortower rankings the complete failure of SD mode... and this arena figure is merely another straw adding to the declining situation.

I remember how the AR cutoff drops gradually -- in the past you needed a score close to tier 39, something like 20980 or so to get a gold chair (rank 3000+). Then it gradually creeped down to 20950, then 20900, then 20850...and now you basically secures a golden chair by staying at T38. Some has been arguing the change due to the shift in balance between offence and defense, but all such arguments pale in front of the plain number of players in a tier, not to say IS is still rotating metas between attacking and defending units.

Many modes become stupid and unenjoyable -- some too easy and auto-able, while some too hard and rage baiting (Pawns of Loki...). Content creator leaving. Devs start recycling old artworks to produce new units. Powercreep at borderline out of control. This is a game with its fate in sight.

The only question is...when will we see Fortune Weaves and related units in FEH?

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Another dwindling game I want to talk about is Godville. This is a game where I might have implicitly talked about, but I am quite surprised that I never covered it clearly on my blog.

This is a 'ZPG' game, a 'zero' player game where you observe your stupid hero working on his own quest with limited interference. This is inspired from the classic Progress Knight which is strictly ZPG -- it caught my eyes for a while, but eventually abandoned because it takes up CPU resources constantly (this is another thing I want to talk about sometimes in the future!), if so why don't I use the resource to mine bitcoin instead? That was the time where regular laptop computer could mine bitcoin with proper value in 2026.

And for Godville, they started from scratch: a diary written by the hero, interferences like voice command, encouragements and punishments; guilds; PVP modes like arena and dungeons; long term goals like temple and arks...

For once, I was so dedicated to optimizing my hero's performance. I had 100/8, 100/4, 100/2 in my first 300 arena duels. There was a random roadside skirmish mechanic in the past where you could run into duels even without entering arena -- and I left a party temporarily just to deal with that stupid fight. I wrote guidelines for those modes -- the guides are called "guide to sailing", not "xxx's guide to sailing". I was top 10 for reaching 3 consecutive long term goals, all while playing in a rather relaxing pace.

(Fun fact, this is a game maintained by two Russian devs with payment accounts in Hong Kong. Perhaps not fun anymore since 2022...)

It was a game that I fully endorse until the new adventure modes and the new long term goals became slightly more biased to P2W. You can't gain extra progress without very dedicated and resource consuming gameplay. I was mildly annoyed when the long term goals like that was produced, although I still ranked 10 at the end. But then we get yet another long term goal of similar nature, so that was the time where I decide to enjoy the game in a backseat instead.

I still enjoy the game in terms of what my hero would do:

05:46 Forretrio told the funniest joke in the world. Shyborg cracked a rib laughing. 05:48 Shyborg told the funniest joke in the world. Blackpony cracked a rib laughing.

or when my little pet did something stupid but adorable:

02:15 Pokie healed the monster. the Headless Chicken looks confused, but happy.

...who doesn't like that? Every diary entries are voted and filtered with the single goal of being universally humorous, and I think the game is doing a great job in that aspect. It is totally free to read all these. The game provides absolutely enough resources as long as you don't blow them into competitive rank racing.

It was the game's 16th birthday a few days ago. The devs were honest: "We’ll be straight with you: the community has been quietly shrinking. Not dramatically — but enough that it matters."

We were given the task to invite players to try the game, and I am more than happy to do so. If you want some simple humor, want games that do not necessarily need any input, want some numbers growing (but not the quick way), please give Godville a try!

No invitation link, no commission. Just pure passion on a game I have spent long enough on. :)