Tensile

Tensile

Tensile is a 64k intro I developed in collaboration with Benedikt Bitterli and Vitor Bosshard for the Revision 2013 demo party. It won 2nd place.

64k intros are a form of computer art, where a self-running executable of a maximum size of 64 kilobytes generates entertaining graphics and music in realtime. The size limitation makes it impossible to directly store any significant amount of data. For example, a single frame of video or a few seconds of audio is already magnitudes larger than the size of the executable itself. Therefore, content is generated through the use of clever algorithms. For example, the music is generated by only storing heavily compressible note and instrument parameter data together with a synthesizer engine. This allows to generate minutes of high quality audio while only using a fraction of the total of 64k space. Graphics are generated similarly, using OpenGL and shaders to create procedural geometry and textures.

While we were able to reuse most of the framework of our previous production Wheels Within Wheels, I decided to completely rewrite the synthesizer engine to use a more modular approach. The result was the development of Opium. Apart from that, my contributions also included:

  • Fixing bugs and improving the framework
  • Creating procedural animation for many of the scenes
  • Most of the sequencing work throughout the demo
  • Some minor graphics effects
  • Composing the soundtrack

More information can be found on Pouet.