Electric Sheep

If you’re looking for a fun and unique way to jazz up your desktop, Electric Sheep is definitely worth checking out! This screensaver is pretty cool because it’s created by thousands of users from all over the world. They connect through the app’s server, making it a truly collaborative experience.

How Electric Sheep Works

So, here’s how it goes down: when you activate the screensaver, your screen goes black for a moment, and then an animated ‘sheep’ pops up. Behind the scenes, Electric Sheep connects to a server and joins in on creating new sheep. Every fifteen minutes, day or night, a brand-new sheep is born and sent out for everyone to enjoy. Each of these sheep is actually an animated fractal flame!

The Life of a Sheep

Each sheep lasts about 4 seconds on your screen. What makes them unique? Their shape, movement, and colors are all defined by something called genetic code—a long string of numbers that gives each sheep its personality! If you see one you really like, just hit the up arrow key to vote for it. The more votes a sheep gets, the longer it stays around and the better chance it has to ‘reproduce’!

The Voting System

This voting creates what we call a fitness function that helps determine which sheep will thrive in the flock based on aesthetics. Plus, if you’re feeling creative yourself, you can download software to design your own genomes! You can then post these custom designs back onto the server where they’ll join the flock too.

Where to Find Electric Sheep

If you want to dive into this amazing screensaver experience yourself, check out more details here.

Electric Sheep also fits nicely into these download collections: Desktop Screenmates.