Binary Toys are animated windowless vector characters “made up of springs, muscles, and masses” that are designed to inhabit your computer, interacting with your desktop environment in accordance with the laws of physics.
Get the picture: animated wireframe creatures walking, crawling around your desktop, tumbling from the top of one open window to the another, falling on their backs, legs wriggling in the air, and hence unable to move without your intervention (which, in this case, could either be to grab hold of the edge of the creature and flick it around with the mouse, or press “U” to magically untangle it). Not sure if I should categorize this as a “game” or a “desktop enhancement 
. Here are more notes:
Interaction: you can grab any of the “nodes” on the creature’s body and drag it around, drop it, etc. Keyboard controls as follows: T/toggle transparency, S/change size, large and small, M/show muscles (really just changes the look a little bit), U/untangle, get back on its feet, R/reverse direction, Space/pause and unpause.- Creatures: ten in total (right click on a creature to change). You can have creatures change randomly or have multiple creatures running around the screen simultaneously. Creatures include: Amoeba , Bouncy Diamond, Breaking Wave, Caterpillar Pod, Cheeky Triangle, Dainty Walker, Dirk Jiggler, Hairy Caterpillar, Millipede, Wiggly Worm. There’s an option to load creatures from an XML file for future additions.
- Behavior: according to the Binary Toys site: “these toys exhibit complex behavior and are surprisingly life-like”. They really do.
- Memory consumption: around 5 megs in memory.
- Installation: no installing necessary; simply run the executable.
Wish list:
- Multi-screen support: I was surprised to find that you can’t grab a creature from one screen and drag it into another. No’r will a creature crawl from the edge of one monitor onto the next one.
- Climbing vertically: as it is, the creatures end up falling down whatever windows may be in their path and settling on the bottom of the screen, where they just pace left and right until you manually pick them up again (or shut them down). It would be cool if at least some of these (spiders, caterpillars, worms, etc) would climb back up on the sides and top of the screen (this wishlist item added after the original posting, on reading users’ comments).
The verdict: honestly this is so cool. These things are amazingly well designed and just look fantastic. Not much practical use for them, of course, short of impressing colleagues (and, ahem, children) with the coolness of your desktop or possibly playing pranks on people – but a must download nonetheless. Go ahead, indulge yourself!
Version Tested: unknown.
Compatibility: WinAll.
Go to the program page to download the latest version (approx 148K).
I am working late in the office. There are 10 other PCs and no people here now. How much fun to shove this in every single “Startup” folder…
Bwhahahaah!!!
I was all excited to try this out (bored at work, it doesn’t take much), so went and downloaded the exe. And they are sort of fun to watch… Briefly… And then they just get stuck in the bottom left of my screen, pacing back and forth between the edge of my window and the edge of the screen. If only they could climb back up to the top of the window and jump off again.
Can they? Is there a secret climbing feature that I’m overlooking?
Anyway, thanks for the brief amusement, even though I am now somewhat underwhelmed.
@Nes: yeah climbing the sides of the screen would be a great idea. Seems like a spider, caterpillar, worm, etc. should be able to do that. Hope the developers read this and consider it for a future version.
I agree with the comment(s) about the climbing feature…but in an odd way I find the toys quite relaxing to watch trundling along the bottom of my screen ^_^
Anyone know how the .xml file feature works?
So I’ve taken to juggling the little creatures whilst bored, throwing them up and then trying to catch one of the red nodes before it hits the bottom of the desktop. Protip: They don’t actually bounce off the top of the screen, but rather fly beyond it. Sometimes I throw the amoeba so hard that it takes a few seconds before it comes down.
It’s better than solitaire! Wheeeee
Climbing would be most good. I wonder if it would make the program too tasking though; right now the memory usage is sublime.
where is the download link???
“where is the download link???”
Click on “program page” at the bottom of the review, and that will take you to the Binary Toys website you can download the program.
Fun little diversion. I used the link on their website to send them an email re: climbing.
Would be cool if the creatures would eat up unused icons, programs, tmp files…
Might want to make the download link at least as big as the rest of the text on the page…
M@
anyone know more about the DIY thingummy (load from .xml)?
I can’t find any examples of them or tutorials…
the most crap!!!!!!!!!!!! thing in the world!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Here’s the ‘how to’ on how to load XML files:
1) BinaryToys is related to SodaPlay (free), so direct your attention there.
2) On the SodaPlay website, under the Play section, look for models created by Constructor.
3) To Preview, click on the model name and Launch (requires Java on your local machine).
(Personally I like models created by user ‘grape’ — Im not ‘grape’ btw.)
4) Using an example URL: http://sodaplay.com/creators/grape/items/the_ball you can preview The_Ball via Java. The XML file for BinaryToys will the example URL ending with .xml:
http://sodaplay.com/creators/grape/items/the_ball.xml
5) Download http://sodaplay.com/creators/grape/items/the_ball.xml to your local computer (usually around 50k) and when you launch BinaryToys, you can load that XML file.
I love this little program, lets me see my models run around my desktop. :3
Also, happy to see others enjoy my works. http://sodaplay.com/creators/grape/items/flower_for_ogal