Plankton
========
Title : Plankton
Author : Mad Smiley / Nuts
Category : PC 4K intro (TRSAC 4 KB compo)
Description
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A 3D Particle Life simulation: 16,384 dots, divided into 6 species, make up
the plankton. The species attract and repel each other, so the dots gather into
colonies of living cells that swim and flash through an underwater ascent, from
the dark deep up toward the light. A wave of light crosses the swarm, and near
the end the dots gather, letter by letter, into the word NUTS, then dissolve
back into living cells while the gold ones form a rubber duck, the TRSAC
mascot, in a cloud of small bubbles, and then dissolves in turn. Everything
is generated at runtime: the simulation, the background, and the ocean
ambience with its four-note motif, which returns at the word and at the duck.
Files
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Three executables, each under 4,096 bytes and each a complete entry. They
show the same intro; they only differ in how the window size is chosen.
plankton_1920x1080.exe Window fixed at 1920x1080.
plankton_1280x720.exe Window fixed at 1280x720.
plankton.exe Window follows the current desktop resolution.
plankton.nfo This file.
The two fixed versions are the ones asked for by the rules. Set the desktop
to the matching resolution first: they open a borderless window of exactly
that size in the top-left corner and do not change the display mode.
plankton.exe needs no setup at any resolution, so it is the safe fallback if
the desktop resolution does not match.
Requirements
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- Windows, 32-bit executable (also runs on 64-bit Windows)
- GPU and driver with OpenGL 4.3 or newer (compute shaders)
- Sound output
- Tested on NVIDIA hardware
Running
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Start the exe. Press Escape to quit early.
Notes
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- The window has no close button handling; use Escape.
- Source, build scripts and credits: see the project repository
(README.md and CREDITS.md).
- Packed with Crinkler (Rune L. H. Stubbe and Aske Simon Christensen),
GLSL minified with Shader Minifier (Laurent Le Brun).