Check this out. It exemplifies the compact coding tradition. Fresh from the Demoscene, here’s the winner of the PC 4K competition at Revision 2012. It was created by a solo programmer who calls himself Demoscene Passivist.
I love how its creator packs so much detail is defined in so little space.
Hartverdrahtet is a three-minute rich media trip into the procedural fractalverse. And it’s squeezed into a miniscule piece of software. Smaller than 4K, the executable program contains all the mathematics you need to generate the unfolding visual and audio complexity. As Demoscene activists like to point out, that’s smaller than an empty Microsoft Word document!
The shader uses a sphere-tracing-based raymarcher with a single fractal formula and camera simulation. It also uses an extra post-processing shader that adds effects such as god-rays, tv-lines and noise. All of that makes the render look less sterile. Programmers synthesized the sound with 4klang.
The name is an homage Hardwired, an early demoscene classic created for the Commodore Amiga. The Silents & Crionics unveiled that at the Party in 1991.
Download the application here. And check out this article on the Creative Applications network.
