Wheels Within Wheels

Wheels Within Wheels is a 64k intro I developed in collaboration with Benedikt Bitterli and Vitor Bosshard for the DemoDays 2012 demo party. It won 1st 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.

My contributions to the production included:

• Cross platform framework including CRT replacement, running on Windows, Linux and OSX
• GUI framework based on OpenGL
• Editor for sequencing scenes, setting up post-processing and animating cameras and other parameters
• Particle system and some post processing effects
• Synthesizer engine running both during execution and as a standalone VST plugin during music composition
• Composing the soundtrack

More information can be found on Pouet.

Screenshot of the custom editor for sequencing the intro.

Screenshot of the custom synthesizer plugin developed to generate the soundtrack.