Eyecandy: Turn your computer into an expensive lava lamp.

JCL Plasma

Initial Release Date
April 2, 1994 (v1.3a)
Color Palette
8/18b
Max Resolution
320x200
License Status
© JCL-Software (but source provided?)
Codebase
x86 Assembly, C
Platform(s)
MS-DOS
Author(s)
Jeremy Longley (aka Jezza)

Description

JCL Plasma produces a color-cycled plasma animation, which runs for 10000 frames and then loops. The length of the animation is dependent on rendering speed, but takes ~2:47m at 60 FPS.

Plasmas are patterns generated by applying functions across each pixel in a grid using the grid coordinates as inputs. The functions frequently use trigonometric functions (i.e. sin/cosine) to keep output values within a valid range (typically 0-255), since for instance, sin(x) will always be between -1 and 1. Fractal or other functions or methods, like value scaling, can also be used.

In JCL Plasma's case we have a 512x300 pixel grid. Animation is generated by merging two screen sized (320x200) windows from the grid that move along curved paths.

Code to generate datasets for alternate plasma patterns, movement functions, and palettes is included, but requires compilation to run.

Video

Screenshots

Downloads

Documentation

External References

Discussion

comments powered by Disqus