Sega MegaDrive

2025-12-18T22:44:46Z

Superogue:

Superogue:

== Sharp X68000 ==
The Sharp X68000 is a home computer created by Sharp Corporation. It was first released in 1987 and sold only in Japan.

The initial model has a 10 MHz Motorola 68000 CPU, 1 MB of RAM, and lacks a hard drive. The final model was released in 1993 with a 25 MHz Motorola 68030 CPU, 4 MB of RAM, and optional 80 MB SCSI hard drive. RAM in these systems is expandable to 12 MB, though most games and applications do not require more than 2 MB.

The X68000 has graphics hardware similar to arcade video games of the late-1980s, with custom coprocessors supporting scrolling, tiled backgrounds, and large numbers of sprites. Sound is supplied through multiple sound chips supporting 8 channels of FM synthesis and one channel of adaptive differential pulse-code modulation audio, which are mixed down to 2 analog stereo channels via a DAC chip. As such, video gaming was a major use of the X68000.

The X68000 runs an operating system called Human68k which was developed for Sharp by Hudson Soft. An MS-DOS-workalike, Human68k features English-based commands very similar to those in MS-DOS;

=== Setting up ===
* Assembler: VASM
* Tools: NDC to create an XDF Disk Image containing the production
* Emulator(s): http://retropc.net/pi/xm6/index.html , https://www.retrostic.com/emulators/sharp-x68000/winx68030, https://mijet.eludevisibility.org/XM6%20Pro-68k/XM6%20Pro-68k.html
* Hardware: Original X68000 or the new X68000Z emulation systems.

=== Memory map ===

<syntaxhighlight lang="">
address vector Function
$000000 $00 SSP after reset
$000004 $01 PC after reset
$000008 $02 Bus error
$00000c $03 Address error
$000010 $04 Unknown instruction
$000014 $05 Division by 0
$000018 $06 CHK instruction
$00001c $07 TRAPV instruction, FTRAPcc instruction
$000020 $08 Privilege violation
$000024 $09 Trace exception
$000028 $0a Unsupported instruction line 1010 emulator (SX call)
$00002c $0b ? line 1111 emulator (DOS call, floating point operation)
$000030 $0c Unused
$000034 $0d FPU Protocol violation exception handling
$000038 $0e Formatting error exception handling
$00003c $0f Uninitialized Interrupt
$000040 $10 Unused
$000044 $11 ?
$000048 $12 ?
$00004c $13 ?
$000050 $14 ?
$000054 $15 ?
$000058 $16 ?
$00005c $17 ?
$000060 $18 Spurious Interrupt
$000064 $19 Level 1 Interrupt (auto vector)
$000068 $1a ?
$00006c $1b ?
$000070 $1c ?
$000074 $1d ?
$000078 $1e ?
$00007c $1f ?
$000080 $20 trap #0
$000084 $21 ? #1
$000088 $22 ? #2
$00008c $23 ? #3
$000090 $24 ? #4
$000094 $25 ? #5
$000098 $26 ? #6
$00009c $27 ? #7
$0000a0 $28 ? #8 (reserved for system)
$0000a4 $29 ? #9 (OS debugger)
$0000a8 $2a ? #10 (reset & power off)
$0000ac $2b ? #11 (BREAK key)
$0000b0 $2c ? #12 (COPY key)
$0000b4 $2d ? #13 (CTRL+C)
$0000b8 $2e ? #14 (error processing)
$0000bc $2f ? #15 (IOCS call)
$0000c0 $30 FPU BSUN
$0000c0 $30 FPU BSUN
$0000c4 $31 ? INEX1,INEX2
$0000c8 $32 ? DZ
$0000cc $33 ? UNFL
$0000d0 $34 ? OPERR
$0000d4 $35 ? OVFL
$0000d8 $36 ? SNAN
$0000dc $37 ???
$0000dc $37 Unused
$0000e0 $38 MMU
$0000e4 $39 ?
$0000e8 $3a ?
$0000ec $3b Unused
$0000fc $3f Unused
$000100 $40 MFP RTC Alarm/1Hz
$000104 $41 MFP External power OFF
$000118 $42 MFP Front switch OFF
$00010c $43 MFP FM Audio source
$000110 $44 MFP Timer-D (Used with BG processing)
$000114 $45 MFP Timer-C (Mouse/cursor/FDD control, etc.)
$000118 $46 MFP V-DISP
$00011c $47 MFP RTC Clock
$000120 $48 MFP Timer-B
$000124 $49 MFP Key serial output error
$000128 $4a MFP Key serial output empty
$00012c $4b MFP Key serial input error
$000130 $4c MFP Key serial input
$000134 $4d MFP Timer-A
$000138 $4e MFP CRTC*IRQ
$00013c $4f MFP H-SYNC
$000140 $50 SCC(B) Transmission buffer empty
$000144 $51 SCC(B) ''
$000148 $52 SCC(B) External/status changes
$00014c $53 SCC(B) ''
$000150 $54 SCC(B) Incoming character validity (Mouse 1 byte input)
$000154 $55 SCC(B) ''
$000158 $56 SCC(B) Special Rx condition
$00015c $57 SCC(B) ''
$000160 $58 SCC(A) Transmission buffer empty
$000164 $59 SCC(A) ''
$000168 $5a SCC(A) External status changes
$00016c $5b SCC(A) ''
$000170 $5c SCC(A) Incoming character validity (RS-232C 1 byte input)
$000174 $5d SCC(A) ''
$000178 $5e SCC(A) Special Rx Condition
$00017c $5f SCC(A) ''
$000180 $60 I/O FDC status interruption
$000184 $61 I/O FDC insertion/discharge interruption
$000188 $62 I/O HDC status interruption
$00018c $63 I/O Printer ready interruption
$000190 $64 DMAC #0 End (FDD)
$000194 $65 DMAC #0 Error ('')
$000198 $66 DMAC #1 End (SASI)
$00019c $67 DMAC #1 Error ('')
$0001a0 $68 DMAC #2 End (IOCS _DMAMOVE,_DMAMOV_A,_DMAMOV_L)
$0001a4 $69 DMAC #2 Error ('')
$0001a8 $6a DMAC #3 End (ADPCM)
$0001ac $6b DMAC #3 Error ('')
$000200 $6c SPC SCSI interruption (Internal SCSI)
$000204 $6d Unused
$0003d4 $f5 Unused
$0003d8 $f6 SPC SCSI interruption (SCSI board)
$0003dc $f7 Unused
$0003fc $ff Unused
0x000000 RAM area
$c00000 Graphics Vram � Page 0
$c80000 Graphics Vram � Page 1 (256/16 color only)
$d00000 Graphics Vram � Page 2 (16 color only)
$d80000 Graphics Vram � Page 3 (16 color only)
$e00000 Text Vram � Bitplane 0
$e20000 Text Vram � Bitplane 1
$e40000 Text Vram � Bitplane 2
$e60000 Text Vram � Bitplane 3
$e80000 1.w R00 Horizontal total
$e80002 1.w R01 Horizontal synchronization end position timing
$e80004 1.w R02 Horizontal display start position
$e80006 1.w R03 Horizontal display end position
$e80008 1.w R04 Vertical total
$e8000a 1.w R05 Vertical synchronization end position timing
$e8000c 1.w R06 Vertical display start position
$e8000e 1.w R07 Vertical display end position
$e80010 1.w R08 External synchronization horizontal adjust: Horizontal position tuning
$e80012 1.w R09 Raster number: Used for raster interruption
$e80014 1.w R10 Text Screen X coordinate
$e80016 1.w R11 Text Screen Y coordinate
$e80018 1.w R12 Graphics screen Scroll X0
$e8001a 1.w R13 Graphics screen Scroll Y0
$e8001c 1.w R14 Graphics screen Scroll X1
$e8001e 1.w R15 Graphics screen Scroll Y1
$e80020 1.w R16 Graphics screen Scroll X2
$e80022 1.w R17 Graphics screen Scroll Y2
$e80024 1.w R18 Graphics screen Scroll X3
$e80026 1.w R19 Graphics screen Scroll Y3
$e80028 1.w R20 Memory mode/Display mode control
$e8002a 1.w R21 Simultaneous access/Raster copy/Quick clear plane select
$e8002c 1.w R22 Raster copy action: Raster number
$e8002e 1.w R23 Text screen access mask pattern
$e80481 1.b Active Image capture/Quick clear/Raster copy control
$e82000 256.w Graphics palette
$e82200 16.w Text palette (Palette block 0)
$e82220 240.w Sprite palette ('' 1-15)
$e82400 1.w R0 (Screen mode initialization)
$e82500 1.w R1 (Priority control)
$e82600 1.w R2 (Special priority/screen display) - Layers On/Off
$e84000 DMAC (HD63450)
$e86000 Memory controller privileged access settings (OHM/ASA)
$e88000 MFP (MC68901)
$e8a000 RTC (RP5C15)
$e8c000 Printer port
$e8e001 #1 Contrast
$e8e003 #2 Display/3D Shutter Glasses (Bit 0=Right Eye / Bit 1 = Left Eye)
$e8e005 #3 Color image unit (bit 4-0)
$e8e007 #4 Keyboard/NMI/dot clock
$e8e009 #5 ROM/DRAM Wait
$e8e00b #6 MPU Classification/Operation clock
$e8e00d #7 SRAM Write
$e8e00f #8 Unit power OFF
$E90001 FM Synthesizer (YM2151) - Register Address Write port
$E90003 FM Synthesizer (YM2151) - Data R/W port
$E92000 ADPCM (MSM6258V)
$E94000 Floppy disk controller (FDC) (uPD72065)
$E94005 Floppy drive monitor (IOSC)
$E96000 SASI
$E98000 ESCC (Z8530)
$E9A000 PPI (82C55)
$E9C000 I/O selector (IOSC)
$E9E000 I/O expansion area (Sharp reserved)
$EB0000 Sprite register (CYNTHIA)
$EB8000 Sprite VRAM
$EC0000 I/O expansion area (User)
$ed0072 2.b SX-Window environment flag (While in use with "SX")
$ed0074 1.b Standard double-click time / 10
$ed0075 1.b Mouse speed / 2
$ed0076 1.b Text palette hue (HSV)
$ed0077 1.b
$ed0078 1.b Brightness palette 0-3 5bit???
$ed007b 1.b Printer drive (PRTD) ID
$ed007c 1.b SRAM info version#, screen status storage, start screen storage
$ed007d 1.b Desktop background (PICT) ID
$ed007e 1.b Screen mode
$ed007f 17.b Reserved for system use (X68030)
$ed0090 1.b Standard cache status (bit=0: off 1:on)
$ed0091 1.b OPM music during startup (0: OFF -1: ON)
$ed0092 1.b 10MHz Proper wait value
$ed0093 1.b 16MHz ''
$ed0094 108.b Reserved for system use
$ed0100 768.b Head SRAM program address
$ed0400 15KB Head SRAMDISK address
$ed3fff End of SRAM
$ed4000 Backup (64KB)
$ee0000 Unused (128KB)
$f00000 CGROM(768KB)
$fc0000 SCSI IOCS / IPL(8KB)
$fe0000 ROM Debugger
$ff0000 IPL / ROM IOCS
</syntaxhighlight>

=== Setting up the Disk Image ===
To get up and running, you need to create a Human68k OS XDF disk image, which is a similar system to MS-DOS.

Add the following files to the disk image:
<syntaxhighlight lang="">
COMMAND.X
HUMAN.SYS
INTRO.R (This is the flat binary output for your intro)
</syntaxhighlight>
Optionally, like in DOS, you can add a AUTOEXEC.BAT that just launches your INTRO.R for auto-startup.

=== Setting the Supervisor ===
Like all 68000 systems, if you want to access registers, you need to set the supervisor mode first before doing anything else:
<syntaxhighlight lang="">
clr.l -(a7)
dc.w $ff20
</syntaxhighlight>

=== Video display ===
To get your video mode up and running, there are two call you need to make in a specific order

<syntaxhighlight lang="">
; Set CRT mode. Clears plane 0/1 on the text screen to set display mode.
; The graphics screen and sprite screen are put into silent mode without being cleared.
; The text palette is initialized.
moveq #10,d1
moveq #$10,d0
trap #15

; Enable graphics mode
; _G_CLR_ON Initializes the graphic screen and sets the display mode
; Clears the graphics screen and displays the palette. The page is set to 0.
move.w #$90,d0
trap #15

; Disable Text Cursor
moveq #$1f,d0
trap #15
</syntaxhighlight>

Here is a full list of all available graphics modes:
<syntaxhighlight lang="">
d1.w p.width resolution colors screens khz
===================================================
0 1024 512 x 512 16 1 31
1 V V V V 15
2 V 256 x 256 V V 31
3 V V V V 15
4 512 512 x 512 16 4 31
5 V V V V 15
6 V 256 x 256 V V 31
7 V V V V 15
8 V 512 x 512 256 2 31
9 V V V V 15
10 V 256 x 256 V V 31
11 V V V V 15
12 V 512 x 512 65536 1 31
13 V V V V 15
14 V 256 x 256 V V 31
15 V V V V 15
16 1024 768 x 512 16 1 31
17 V 1024 x 424 V V 24
18 V 1024 x 848 V V 24
19 V 640 x 480 V V 24
20 V 768 x 512 256 2 31
21 V 1024 x 848 V V 24
22 V 1024 x 424 V V 24
23 V 640 x 480 V V 24
24 V 768 x 512 65536 1 31
25 V 1024 x 848 V V 24
26 V 1024 x 424 V V 24
27 V 640 x 480 V V 24
</syntaxhighlight>

==== Vsync ====
<syntaxhighlight lang="">
waitVBlank:
move.w $e88000,d0
and.w #%00010000,d0 ;Wait for vblank to start
beq waitVBlank
waitVBlank2:
move.w $e88000,d0
and.w #%00010000,d0 ;Wait for Vblank to end
bne waitVBlank2
rts
</syntaxhighlight>

==== Clearing the screen ====
You can clear the active screen using the WIPE IOCS routine ($b5)
<syntaxhighlight lang="">
move.w #$b5,d0
trap #15
</syntaxhighlight>

==== Plotting to screen ====
When accessing using GRAM directly, you can fill the GVRAM directly in word (64k colors), byte (8 bit palette) or 4-bit 16 color mode.
<syntaxhighlight lang="">
lea GVRAM,a0
move.w #256,d7
drawloop:
move.w (a0)+,d0
dbra d7,drawloop
</syntaxhighlight>
Since GVRAM buffer widths can differ from the resolution you are using, make sure to skip enough words at the end of each line to make up for the difference.

==== IOCS Drawing routines ====
Alternatively you could make use of the IOCS functions for drawing primitives using TRAP #15.
These are slow tom routines, compatible with all kinds of modes,
All these make use of a parameter buffer in A1 that you need to fill yourself with the correct information, for example for _PSET this would contain X,Y,COLOR like so:

<syntaxhighlight lang="">
lea params,a1
move.w d2,(a1) ; x-coord
move.w d3,2(a1) ; y-coord
move.w #255,4(a1) ; color
move.l #_PSET,d0
trap #15
</syntaxhighlight>

Here is a full list of other IOCS drawing routines you are able to use.
<syntaxhighlight lang="">
_PSET equ $b6
_POINT equ $b7
_LINE equ $b8
_BOX equ $b9
_FILL equ $ba
_CIRCLE equ $bb
_PAINT equ $bc
</syntaxhighlight>

=== Sound ===
The X68000 has a YM2151 FM Soundchip on board with 8 channels.
Each channel's sound can be built up with 4 different 'slots. There are a total of 32 slots that can be turned on or off when the sound is triggered. For more information, check out the YM2151 specs at [https://msxpro.com/datasheet.html]

Alternatively, there is also an option to output digital PCM sound.

=== Additional Resources ===
* [https://www.chibiakumas.com/68000/x68000.php Assembly programming for the X68000]
* [https://archive.org/details/X68000_488] X68000 Technical data book
* [https://msxpro.com/datasheet.html] YM2151 Datasheet
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/?platform=100 X68000 demoscene productions]
* [https://archive.org/details/cpsystem/page/202/mode/2up X68000 chapter in the book "The Book of CP-System"]

2025-11-28T11:48:36Z

Superogue: /* Spectrum QL */

4K Intro

2025-11-04T00:02:26Z

Superogue:

== Introduction ==
This category is dedicated to modern 4K Intro development for [[Windows|Windows / Win32]], which consist of a small OpenGL/D3D/DX Framework, a softsynth and 1 or more pixelshaders. As such this won't be discussion legacy mesh techniques as few 4k intros make use of those techniques anymore.

Most Windows 4K Intros will be setup using C, sometimes in combination with assembler, or in some cases pure assembler. In general writing everything in assembler should give you a little more freedom in pushing/popping your function arguments and register usage.

Graphics are usualy done using OpenGL / GLSL or Direct3D/DX11.

=== Tools ===
There are a couple of options for tools, but generally these tools are often used
* Visual Studio / Vscode / GCC Compiler
* Crinkler or other external packer for compression ( https://crinkler.net )
* Shader minifier ( https://github.com/laurentlb/Shader_Minifier )
* Optional / Alternatively: NASM Assembler ( https://nasm.us/ )
* Optional: Local/Online GLSL Shader editing environment (e.g. Shadertoy, Kodelife, bonzo, etc.)
* Optional: Timeline/Camera tooling
* Optional: gnuRocket for timing.

== Intro design ==
When designing a 4k intro, it is best practice to consider each of the following aspects seperately:

* How much size budget do you want to allocate to render pipeline, sound, scene building, (post)shading, progression?
* Abstract vs organic vs scene/world-building
* Single scene vs multiple scenes
* Ray-Intersections or Ray Marching
* What kind of softsynth to use, or writing your own
* Render pipeline - Single or multipass (post/audio)shaders.
* Scene, Camera and progression handling
* Text - Do you want to include text and if so: Are you using WindowsGlyphs texture or SDF

=== Design pitfalls ===
Here are a few design pitfalls you should try to avoid if necessary.

==== Undirected raymarch experiments ====
Wiggly domain repetition shadertoy experiments, with or without walking glows, might be sufficient for a shaderjam or shader-showdown, but usually make a sub-par 4k intro. Don't do it, even if it has the compofiller banner on the slide.

==== The Rebranded cornell box - Just a shiny sphere bro! ====
Its great as a rendertest reference for your PBR / pathtracing tests, but it doesn't make a compelling intro.
The times you still see a reflective/pathtraced sphere and/or box with music mask as a 4k intro is staggering.
Sadly sceners still accept these rebranded cornell boxes as legit and even winning/cdc receiving intros, because shineys.
But my intuition says these will be looked upon like the countless early 2000s goa+bended sphers/torus intros that fail to stand the test of time.

==== Shitty synths ====
There are a few great intros out there that have great visuals but are ruined by glopawful synths or music. If you are not good at music yourself, find yourself a musician to work with.

== Size Budgeting ==
A general rule of thumb is to work above the target size for most of the development and work your way down when the production is closer to completion.

There are many ways to split the same bytes, here are the top-5 4K Intros at Revision 2024 that have made wildly different choices.
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Ranking !! Intro Title !! Progression / Storytelling !! Object complexity || Graphics Fidelity !! Sound !! Notes !! Link
|-
| 1 || Drifting Shore || Low || Low || Very-High || Low || Ray-Intersection + Pathtracing || https://demozoo.org/productions/342196/
|-
| 2 || Dubplate || Medium || Low || High || Very-High || SDF Text || https://demozoo.org/productions/342202/
|-
| 3 || Return to nature || High || High || Low || Low || - || https://demozoo.org/productions/342200/
|-
| 4 || Brainfiller || Low || Medium || High || High || GLSL Softsynth || https://demozoo.org/productions/342203/
|-
| 5 || Once Upon A Time In A Datacenter || High || Very-High || Low || Low || Custom CPU synthcode || https://demozoo.org/productions/342199/
|}

==== Graphics fidelity ====
TBA

==== Music budget ====
Got a musician to work with you and deliver a great tune? Don't accept it right out of the gate and feel free to argue about possible optimisations that can be done to the tune that will not affect the end-result massively. This is done by all of the better-known 4k intro developers and a good musician will be open to discussion and aware of the different limitation and choices that have to be made when it comes to size budgeting.

== Setting up your framework ==
A 4k framework / intro can be setup in either C or Assembler, or a combination of both.
You can either go with an existing framework (some of them are quite capable) or build your own taylored to your own needs.
Also remember that even though there are many more ways to save size than in for example a 1k intro, that every byte saved here is one you can spent / budget elsewhere.

* The groundlevel basics of a framework are discussed on the 1K Intro wiki at http://www.sizecoding.org/wiki/1K_Intro
* From here you can setup your audiobuffer add a softsynth of choice, or write your own (either in GLSL or Software)
* Most likely you'll like to add a few more function imports to properly pass uniforms to your shader.
* Optionally: Add another render-pass by feeding the output of the main shader to a post-shading process. This adds a few more texture calls to the framework
* Optionally: Add an init pass where you prepare (glyph) textures and other buffers you'd like to feed into your main shader.
* Optionally: Hook up a Scene/Camera/Timing system during development

== Graphics ==
Once you've budgeted and designed your intro, it is time to go to work.

==== Prebuild your scene in an external tool ====
For convenience and turn-around time, its perfectly fine to use external online/offline tools like Shadertoy, Posh-Brolly, Kodelife, Bonzo or others to setup you main scene(s) / effects.

==== Ray-Intersetions vs Raymarching ====
In theory ideally you'd like to have multi-sample, multiple bounces, highly flexible, highly accurate raymarching
But in practice this is as of year (2024) still impossible to do realtime on most systems, therefore a choice has to be made between exact interesctions of primitives / raytracing vs ray marching. What are the differences in usecases and what are their pros and cons:

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Description !! Raymarching !! Ray-Intersection !! Examples
|-
| Domain-Repetition || Yes || No || TBA
|-
| Fast Multi-Sample || No || Yes || TBA
|-
| Twisting & Blending || Yes || No || TBA
|-
| Shape-Blending || Yes || ? || TBA
|}

==== Post processing: Don't miss the low-hanging fruit ====
Having a proper post processing step can greatly improve the overall visual quality of your intro. So in 4k space i would suggest a postshader pass at minimum, which depending on your size budget you can use for things like Vignetting, DOF, tone-mapping, anti-aliasing, chromatic abberation, etc.

But even if your 4k intro doesn't have a seperate post-shader pass, adding a bit of in-shader vignetting / gamma correction / tone-mapping to your intro are relative easy/cheap ways to improve visual quality of your intro, so why leave those options off the table?
For inspiration, You can check out the article at Here is an article at https://30fps.net/pages/post-processing/ for a few things you can do to improve your visuals in post.

== Sound ==
Here is an overview of various Synths / Music options.
Depending on the exact track, you are looking at approx 1k - 1.5k compressed for music for most 4k intros.

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Synth !! Type !! Description !! Size overhead !! Link
|-
| 4klang || Subtractive || Most popular softsynth || Medium (1 note, 1 instrument at 620b) || https://github.com/gopher-atz/4klang
|-
| Sointu || Subtractive || 4klang fork with improvements || Medium (1 note, 1 instrument at 562b )|| https://github.com/vsariola/sointu/
|-
| Oidos || Additive || - || Medium (1 note, 1 instrument at 600b) || https://github.com/askeksa/Oidos
|-
| Clinkster || FM || - || Medium (1 note, 1 instrument at 590b) || http://crinkler.net/Clinkster.zip
|-
| GLSL Softsynth || - || Write it yourself || Small/Medium (depends on usecase) || -
|-
| MIDI Player || MIDI || Using default Windows midi sounds || Small/Medium (depends on player/song complexity) || -
|-
|}

As a snapshot. Here is a list of intros from 2017 with the synth they used:
{| class="wikitable"
|-
| Absolute Territory || 4klang
|-
| Waillee || 4klang
|-
| final stage || Custom
|-
| Horizon Machine || 4klang
|-
| Unprogress || Clinkster
|-
| Faraday Future || 4klang
|-
| Alive Here Now, Forever || Oidos
|-
| Destination Unknown || Oidos
|-
| w a y f a r e r || 4klang
|-
| HAL 4000 || 4klang
|-
| Equilibrium || 4klang
|-
| visit berlin || 4klang
|-
| お花見 || 4klang
|-
| Gary Glitter || 4klang
|-
| Superfine || Oidos
|-
| Cycle Of Nature || Oidos
|-
| Oxano || Oidos
|-
| Those Who Leave || 4klang
|-
| Maintenance || Clinkster
|-
| Joia || 4klang
|-
| Back to the Roots || Oidos
|-
| Dropletia || Oidos
|-
| crystalline lord || 4klang
|-
| highrider || 4klang
|-
| Primordial Soup || Custom
|-
|}

== Compression ==
Crinkler is the most commonly used compression at the moment for 4K intros. It maximizes compression by taking over the linking process, setting up the windows header for you and if needed re-arrange the different segments of the code.

==== Crinkler reports ====
When using the <code>/REPORT:intro_report.html</code> feature, crinkler will generate a report and heatmap for your intro binary.
This is helpful to see how well your (shader)code compresses and where you can maybe gain a few more bytes.

==== Word about the resulting executable ====
Please note that when using crinkler in TINYHEADER mode, the resulting windows header will most likely trigger virus scanners / Microsoft Defender and mark it as suspicious content, which is a side-effect in recent years. Just exclude your work directory from this scan during development. Compo machines will run without these scanners too, but it is good practice to include a (slightly larger) safe version too in the final archive.

== Resources ==

==== Frameworks ====
* [https://github.com/armak/Leviathan-2.0 Leviathan 2.0]
* [https://github.com/in4k/isystem1k4k IQ's 1k/4k frameworks]
* [https://github.com/psycholns/TinyDX11 Psycho's 1k/4k framework]
* [http://www.kameli.net/compofillerstudio/ Compofiller studio]
* [https://github.com/yosshin4004/minimal_gl Minimal gl framework]
* [https://github.com/Beluki/4kGL 4KGL framework]
* [https://github.com/w23/bepct4k Bepct4k]

==== Raymarching ====
* [https://jamie-wong.com/2016/07/15/ray-marching-signed-distance-functions/ Introduction to Raymarching]
* [https://iquilezles.org/articles/distfunctions/ IQ's distance functions page]
* [https://mercury.sexy/hg_sdf/ Mercury's SDF toolbox]

==== High Quality 4K intros for Windows ====
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/371094/ Hexer (2025)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/355449/ XO (2024)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/331908/ Architectural Shapeshifter (2023)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/311778/ Stahlbeton (2022)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/278629/ The Vanishing of Ashlar (2020)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/266556/ Eisenerz (2019)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/185233/ Oscar's Chair (2018)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/174689/ Unprogress (2017)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/178895/ Waillee (2017)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/170744/ Horizon Machine (2017)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/91680/ Neuron (2013)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/102/ Elevated (2009)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/4846/ Atrium (2008)]

==== 4K intros for Windows with Sourcecode ====
* [https://github.com/friol/planetx Planet X (2025)]
* [https://github.com/vsariola/dipping-deep-dub-drop/tree/master Dipping deep dub drop (2025)]
* [https://github.com/faemiyah/faemiyah-demoscene_2024-08_4k-intro_olkiluoto_3-2-1 Olkiluoto 3-1-1 (2024)]
* [https://github.com/0b5vr/brainfiller Brainfiller (2024)]
* [https://github.com/TheNuSan/Lev4k/tree/DriftingShore Drifting Shore (2024)]
* [https://github.com/vsariola/every-datapoint Every Datapoint has a soul (2024)]
* [https://github.com/Krafpy/Island/tree/master/ Island (2024)]
* [https://github.com/LeStahL/ontrack-4k physics girl (2023)]
* [https://github.com/vsariola/fluxerator Fluxerator (2023)]
* [https://github.com/vsariola/adam Adam (2021)]
* [https://github.com/LeStahL/abstraction-confusion Abstraction Confusion (2021)]
* [https://github.com/w23/jetlag_stuck Stuck (2020)]
* [https://github.com/faemiyah/faemiyah-demoscene_2019-08_4k-intro_region_de_magallanes Region de Magallanes (2019)]
* [https://github.com/demoscene-source-archive/oscar-s-chair Oscar's Chair (2018)]
* [https://github.com/w23/jetlag_appear Appear (2018)]
* [https://github.com/w23/jetlag_posle Posle (2018)]
* [https://github.com/w23/nwep nwep (2017)]
* [https://github.com/keensky/hal4000 Hall4000 (2017)]
* [https://github.com/in4k/rgba_tbc_elevated_source Elevated (2009)]

==== Seminars ====
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-VDVgCBy-M Shader minification for 4k - 64k intros (2023)]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLhT06lwaig 4klang 101 - Basics (2019)]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir0vcmHkIm0 nstalling and trying out different synths for 4kb intros (2017)]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BqKH0XNN-g Size Restricted music isn't Rocketscience (2017)]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP__g_9FT4M Sound Design with 4klang, by Wayfinder (2015)]

==== Articles ====
* [ftp://ftp.untergrund.net/users/thygrion/sosp.zip Music in 4 Kilobytes - Size Optimized Synthesizer Programming]
* [https://iquilezles.org/articles/function2009/function2009.pdf Behind Elevated]
* [https://in4k.github.io/html_articles/Amietia%20%E2%80%A2%20The%20Making%20Of%20Oscar's%20Chair.html Making of Oscar's chair]
* [https://www.codeslow.com/2020/07/writing-winning-4k-intro-in-rust.html Article about writing a 4k intro using Rust]
* [https://in4k.github.io/wiki/aulds-4k-synth Article about writing a softsynth]

4K Intro

2025-11-03T23:53:46Z

Superogue:

== Introduction ==
This category is dedicated to modern 4K Intro development for [[Windows|Windows / Win32]], which consist of a small OpenGL/D3D/DX Framework, a softsynth and 1 or more pixelshaders. As such this won't be discussion legacy mesh techniques as few 4k intros make use of those techniques anymore.

Most Windows 4K Intros will be setup using C, sometimes in combination with assembler, or in some cases pure assembler. In general writing everything in assembler should give you a little more freedom in pushing/popping your function arguments and register usage.

Graphics are usualy done using OpenGL / GLSL or Direct3D/DX11.

=== Tools ===
There are a couple of options for tools, but generally these tools are often used
* Visual Studio / Vscode / GCC Compiler
* Crinkler or other external packer for compression ( https://crinkler.net )
* Shader minifier ( https://github.com/laurentlb/Shader_Minifier )
* Optional / Alternatively: NASM Assembler ( https://nasm.us/ )
* Optional: Local/Online GLSL Shader editing environment (e.g. Shadertoy, Kodelife, bonzo, etc.)
* Optional: Timeline/Camera tooling
* Optional: gnuRocket for timing.

== Intro design ==
When designing a 4k intro, it is best practice to consider each of the following aspects seperately:

* How much size budget do you want to allocate to render pipeline, sound, scene building, (post)shading, progression?
* Abstract vs organic vs scene/world-building
* Single scene vs multiple scenes
* Ray-Intersections or Ray Marching
* What kind of softsynth to use, or writing your own
* Render pipeline - Single or multipass (post/audio)shaders.
* Scene, Camera and progression handling
* Text - Do you want to include text and if so: Are you using WindowsGlyphs texture or SDF

=== Design pitfalls ===
Here are a few design pitfalls you should try to avoid if necessary.

==== Undirected raymarch experiments ====
Wiggly domain repetition shadertoy experiments, with or without walking glows, might be sufficient for a shaderjam or shader-showdown, but usually make a sub-par 4k intro. Don't do it, even if it has the compofiller banner on the slide.

==== The Rebranded cornell box - Just a shiny sphere bro! ====
Its great as a rendertest reference for your PBR / pathtracing tests, but it doesn't make a compelling intro.
The times you still see a reflective/pathtraced sphere and/or box with music mask as a 4k intro is staggering.
Sadly sceners still accept these rebranded cornell boxes as legit and even winning/cdc receiving intros, because shineys.
But my intuition says these will be looked upon like the countless early 2000s goa+bended sphers/torus intros that fail to stand the test of time.

==== Shitty synths ====
There are a few great intros out there that have great visuals but are ruined by glopawful synths or music. If you are not good at music yourself, find yourself a musician to work with.

== Size Budgeting ==
A general rule of thumb is to work above the target size for most of the development and work your way down when the production is closer to completion.

There are many ways to split the same bytes, here are the top-5 4K Intros at Revision 2024 that have made wildly different choices.
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Ranking !! Intro Title !! Progression / Storytelling !! Object complexity || Graphics Fidelity !! Sound !! Notes !! Link
|-
| 1 || Drifting Shore || Low || Low || Very-High || Low || Ray-Intersection + Pathtracing || https://demozoo.org/productions/342196/
|-
| 2 || Dubplate || Medium || Low || High || Very-High || SDF Text || https://demozoo.org/productions/342202/
|-
| 3 || Return to nature || High || High || Low || Low || - || https://demozoo.org/productions/342200/
|-
| 4 || Brainfiller || Low || Medium || High || High || GLSL Softsynth || https://demozoo.org/productions/342203/
|-
| 5 || Once Upon A Time In A Datacenter || High || Very-High || Low || Low || Custom CPU synthcode || https://demozoo.org/productions/342199/
|}

==== Graphics fidelity ====
TBA

==== Music budget ====
Got a musician to work with you and deliver a great tune? Don't accept it right out of the gate and feel free to argue about possible optimisations that can be done to the tune that will not affect the end-result massively. This is done by all of the better-known 4k intro developers and a good musician will be open to discussion and aware of the different limitation and choices that have to be made when it comes to size budgeting.

== Setting up your framework ==
A 4k framework / intro can be setup in either C or Assembler, or a combination of both.
You can either go with an existing framework (some of them are quite capable) or build your own taylored to your own needs.
Also remember that even though there are many more ways to save size than in for example a 1k intro, that every byte saved here is one you can spent / budget elsewhere.

* The groundlevel basics of a framework are discussed on the 1K Intro wiki at http://www.sizecoding.org/wiki/1K_Intro
* From here you can setup your audiobuffer add a softsynth of choice, or write your own (either in GLSL or Software)
* Most likely you'll like to add a few more function imports to properly pass uniforms to your shader.
* Optionally: Add another render-pass by feeding the output of the main shader to a post-shading process. This adds a few more texture calls to the framework
* Optionally: Add an init pass where you prepare (glyph) textures and other buffers you'd like to feed into your main shader.
* Optionally: Hook up a Scene/Camera/Timing system during development

== Graphics ==
Once you've budgeted and designed your intro, it is time to go to work.

==== Prebuild your scene in an external tool ====
For convenience and turn-around time, its perfectly fine to use external online/offline tools like Shadertoy, Posh-Brolly, Kodelife, Bonzo or others to setup you main scene(s) / effects.

==== Ray-Intersetions vs Raymarching ====
In theory ideally you'd like to have multi-sample, multiple bounces, highly flexible, highly accurate raymarching
But in practice this is as of year (2024) still impossible to do realtime on most systems, therefore a choice has to be made between exact interesctions of primitives / raytracing vs ray marching. What are the differences in usecases and what are their pros and cons:

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Description !! Raymarching !! Ray-Intersection !! Examples
|-
| Domain-Repetition || Yes || No || TBA
|-
| Fast Multi-Sample || No || Yes || TBA
|-
| Twisting & Blending || Yes || No || TBA
|-
| Shape-Blending || Yes || ? || TBA
|}

==== Post processing: Don't miss the low-hanging fruit ====
Having a proper post processing step can greatly improve the overall visual quality of your intro. So in 4k space i would suggest a postshader pass at minimum, which depending on your size budget you can use for things like Vignetting, DOF, tone-mapping, anti-aliasing, chromatic abberation, etc.

But even if your 4k intro doesn't have a seperate post-shader pass, adding a bit of in-shader vignetting / gamma correction / tone-mapping to your intro are relative easy/cheap ways to improve visual quality of your intro, so why leave those options off the table?
For inspiration, You can check out the article at Here is an article at https://30fps.net/pages/post-processing/ for a few things you can do to improve your visuals in post.

== Sound ==
Here is an overview of various Synths / Music options.
Depending on the exact track, you are looking at approx 1k - 1.5k compressed for music for most 4k intros.

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Synth !! Type !! Description !! Size overhead !! Link
|-
| 4klang || Subtractive || Most popular softsynth || Medium (1 note, 1 instrument at 620b) || https://github.com/gopher-atz/4klang
|-
| Sointu || Subtractive || 4klang fork with improvements || Medium (1 note, 1 instrument at 562b )|| https://github.com/vsariola/sointu/
|-
| Oidos || Additive || - || Medium (1 note, 1 instrument at 600b) || https://github.com/askeksa/Oidos
|-
| Clinkster || FM || - || Medium (1 note, 1 instrument at 590b) || http://crinkler.net/Clinkster.zip
|-
| GLSL Softsynth || - || Write it yourself || Small/Medium (depends on usecase) || -
|-
| MIDI Player || MIDI || Using default Windows midi sounds || Small/Medium (depends on player/song complexity) || -
|-
|}

As a snapshot. Here is a list of intros from 2017 with the synth they used:
{| class="wikitable"
|-
| Absolute Territory || 4klang
|-
| Waillee || 4klang
|-
| final stage || Custom
|-
| Horizon Machine || 4klang
|-
| Unprogress || Clinkster
|-
| Faraday Future || 4klang
|-
| Alive Here Now, Forever || Oidos
|-
| Destination Unknown || Oidos
|-
| w a y f a r e r || 4klang
|-
| HAL 4000 || 4klang
|-
| Equilibrium || 4klang
|-
| visit berlin || 4klang
|-
| お花見 || 4klang
|-
| Gary Glitter || 4klang
|-
| Superfine || Oidos
|-
| Cycle Of Nature || Oidos
|-
| Oxano || Oidos
|-
| Those Who Leave || 4klang
|-
| Maintenance || Clinkster
|-
| Joia || 4klang
|-
| Back to the Roots || Oidos
|-
| Dropletia || Oidos
|-
| crystalline lord || 4klang
|-
| highrider || 4klang
|-
| Primordial Soup || Custom
|-
|}

== Compression ==
Crinkler is the most commonly used compression at the moment for 4K intros. It maximizes compression by taking over the linking process, setting up the windows header for you and if needed re-arrange the different segments of the code.

==== Crinkler reports ====
When using the <code>/REPORT:intro_report.html</code> feature, crinkler will generate a report and heatmap for your intro binary.
This is helpful to see how well your (shader)code compresses and where you can maybe gain a few more bytes.

==== Word about the resulting executable ====
Please note that when using crinkler in TINYHEADER mode, the resulting windows header will most likely trigger virus scanners / Microsoft Defender and mark it as suspicious content, which is a side-effect in recent years. Just exclude your work directory from this scan during development. Compo machines will run without these scanners too, but it is good practice to include a (slightly larger) safe version too in the final archive.

== Resources ==

==== Frameworks ====
* [https://github.com/armak/Leviathan-2.0 Leviathan 2.0]
* [https://github.com/in4k/isystem1k4k IQ's 1k/4k frameworks]
* [https://github.com/psycholns/TinyDX11 Psycho's 1k/4k framework]
* [http://www.kameli.net/compofillerstudio/ Compofiller studio]
* [https://github.com/yosshin4004/minimal_gl Minimal gl framework]
* [https://github.com/Beluki/4kGL 4KGL framework]
* [https://github.com/w23/bepct4k Bepct4k]

==== Raymarching ====
* [https://jamie-wong.com/2016/07/15/ray-marching-signed-distance-functions/ Introduction to Raymarching]
* [https://iquilezles.org/articles/distfunctions/ IQ's distance functions page]
* [https://mercury.sexy/hg_sdf/ Mercury's SDF toolbox]

==== High Quality 4K intros for Windows ====
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/371094/ Hexer (2025)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/355449/ XO (2024)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/331908/ Architectural Shapeshifter (2023)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/311778/ Stahlbeton (2022)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/278629/ The Vanishing of Ashlar (2020)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/266556/ Eisenerz (2019)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/185233/ Oscar's Chair (2018)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/174689/ Unprogress (2017)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/178895/ Waillee (2017)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/170744/ Horizon Machine (2017)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/91680/ Neuron (2013)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/102/ Elevated (2009)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/4846/ Atrium (2008)]

==== 4K intros for Windows with Sourcecode ====
* [https://github.com/friol/planetx Planet X (2025)]
* [https://github.com/vsariola/dipping-deep-dub-drop/tree/master Dipping deep dub drop (2025)]
* [https://github.com/faemiyah/faemiyah-demoscene_2024-08_4k-intro_olkiluoto_3-2-1 Olkiluoto 3-1-1 (2024)]
* [https://github.com/0b5vr/brainfiller Brainfiller (2024)]
* [https://github.com/TheNuSan/Lev4k/tree/DriftingShore Drifting Shore (2024)]
* [https://github.com/vsariola/every-datapoint Every Datapoint has a soul (2024)]
* [https://github.com/Krafpy/Island/tree/master/ Island (2024)]
* [https://github.com/LeStahL/ontrack-4k physics girl (2023)]
* [https://github.com/vsariola/fluxerator Fluxerator (2023)]
* [https://github.com/vsariola/adam Adam (2021)]
* [https://github.com/LeStahL/abstraction-confusion Abstraction Confusion (2021)]
* [https://github.com/faemiyah/faemiyah-demoscene_2019-08_4k-intro_region_de_magallanes Region de Magallanes (2019)]
* [https://github.com/demoscene-source-archive/oscar-s-chair Oscar's Chair (2018)]
* [https://github.com/w23/jetlag_appear Appear (2018)]
* [https://github.com/w23/jetlag_posle Posle (2018)]
* [https://github.com/w23/nwep nwep (2017)]
* [https://github.com/keensky/hal4000 Hall4000 (2017)]
* [https://github.com/in4k/rgba_tbc_elevated_source Elevated (2009)]

==== Seminars ====
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-VDVgCBy-M Shader minification for 4k - 64k intros (2023)]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLhT06lwaig 4klang 101 - Basics (2019)]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir0vcmHkIm0 nstalling and trying out different synths for 4kb intros (2017)]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BqKH0XNN-g Size Restricted music isn't Rocketscience (2017)]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP__g_9FT4M Sound Design with 4klang, by Wayfinder (2015)]

==== Articles ====
* [ftp://ftp.untergrund.net/users/thygrion/sosp.zip Music in 4 Kilobytes - Size Optimized Synthesizer Programming]
* [https://iquilezles.org/articles/function2009/function2009.pdf Behind Elevated]
* [https://in4k.github.io/html_articles/Amietia%20%E2%80%A2%20The%20Making%20Of%20Oscar's%20Chair.html Making of Oscar's chair]
* [https://www.codeslow.com/2020/07/writing-winning-4k-intro-in-rust.html Article about writing a 4k intro using Rust]
* [https://in4k.github.io/wiki/aulds-4k-synth Article about writing a softsynth]

4K Intro

2025-11-03T23:52:07Z

Superogue:

== Introduction ==
This category is dedicated to modern 4K Intro development for [[Windows|Windows / Win32]], which consist of a small OpenGL/D3D/DX Framework, a softsynth and 1 or more pixelshaders. As such this won't be discussion legacy mesh techniques as few 4k intros make use of those techniques anymore.

Most Windows 4K Intros will be setup using C, sometimes in combination with assembler, or in some cases pure assembler. In general writing everything in assembler should give you a little more freedom in pushing/popping your function arguments and register usage.

Graphics are usualy done using OpenGL / GLSL or Direct3D/DX11.

=== Tools ===
There are a couple of options for tools, but generally these tools are often used
* Visual Studio / Vscode / GCC Compiler
* Crinkler or other external packer for compression ( https://crinkler.net )
* Shader minifier ( https://github.com/laurentlb/Shader_Minifier )
* Optional / Alternatively: NASM Assembler ( https://nasm.us/ )
* Optional: Local/Online GLSL Shader editing environment (e.g. Shadertoy, Kodelife, bonzo, etc.)
* Optional: Timeline/Camera tooling
* Optional: gnuRocket for timing.

== Intro design ==
When designing a 4k intro, it is best practice to consider each of the following aspects seperately:

* How much size budget do you want to allocate to render pipeline, sound, scene building, (post)shading, progression?
* Abstract vs organic vs scene/world-building
* Single scene vs multiple scenes
* Ray-Intersections or Ray Marching
* What kind of softsynth to use, or writing your own
* Render pipeline - Single or multipass (post/audio)shaders.
* Scene, Camera and progression handling
* Text - Do you want to include text and if so: Are you using WindowsGlyphs texture or SDF

=== Design pitfalls ===
Here are a few design pitfalls you should try to avoid if necessary.

==== Undirected raymarch experiments ====
Wiggly domain repetition shadertoy experiments, with or without walking glows, might be sufficient for a shaderjam or shader-showdown, but usually make a sub-par 4k intro. Don't do it, even if it has the compofiller banner on the slide.

==== The Rebranded cornell box - Just a shiny sphere bro! ====
Its great as a rendertest reference for your PBR / pathtracing tests, but it doesn't make a compelling intro.
The times you still see a reflective/pathtraced sphere and/or box with music mask as a 4k intro is staggering.
Sadly sceners still accept these rebranded cornell boxes as legit and even winning/cdc receiving intros, because shineys.
But my intuition says these will be looked upon like the countless early 2000s goa+bended sphers/torus intros that fail to stand the test of time.

==== Shitty synths ====
There are a few great intros out there that have great visuals but are ruined by glopawful synths or music. If you are not good at music yourself, find yourself a musician to work with.

== Size Budgeting ==
A general rule of thumb is to work above the target size for most of the development and work your way down when the production is closer to completion.

There are many ways to split the same bytes, here are the top-5 4K Intros at Revision 2024 that have made wildly different choices.
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Ranking !! Intro Title !! Progression / Storytelling !! Object complexity || Graphics Fidelity !! Sound !! Notes !! Link
|-
| 1 || Drifting Shore || Low || Low || Very-High || Low || Ray-Intersection + Pathtracing || https://demozoo.org/productions/342196/
|-
| 2 || Dubplate || Medium || Low || High || Very-High || SDF Text || https://demozoo.org/productions/342202/
|-
| 3 || Return to nature || High || High || Low || Low || - || https://demozoo.org/productions/342200/
|-
| 4 || Brainfiller || Low || Medium || High || High || GLSL Softsynth || https://demozoo.org/productions/342203/
|-
| 5 || Once Upon A Time In A Datacenter || High || Very-High || Low || Low || Custom CPU synthcode || https://demozoo.org/productions/342199/
|}

==== Graphics fidelity ====
TBA

==== Music budget ====
Got a musician to work with you and deliver a great tune? Don't accept it right out of the gate and feel free to argue about possible optimisations that can be done to the tune that will not affect the end-result massively. This is done by all of the better-known 4k intro developers and a good musician will be open to discussion and aware of the different limitation and choices that have to be made when it comes to size budgeting.

== Setting up your framework ==
A 4k framework / intro can be setup in either C or Assembler, or a combination of both.
You can either go with an existing framework (some of them are quite capable) or build your own taylored to your own needs.
Also remember that even though there are many more ways to save size than in for example a 1k intro, that every byte saved here is one you can spent / budget elsewhere.

* The groundlevel basics of a framework are discussed on the 1K Intro wiki at http://www.sizecoding.org/wiki/1K_Intro
* From here you can setup your audiobuffer add a softsynth of choice, or write your own (either in GLSL or Software)
* Most likely you'll like to add a few more function imports to properly pass uniforms to your shader.
* Optionally: Add another render-pass by feeding the output of the main shader to a post-shading process. This adds a few more texture calls to the framework
* Optionally: Add an init pass where you prepare (glyph) textures and other buffers you'd like to feed into your main shader.
* Optionally: Hook up a Scene/Camera/Timing system during development

== Graphics ==
Once you've budgeted and designed your intro, it is time to go to work.

==== Prebuild your scene in an external tool ====
For convenience and turn-around time, its perfectly fine to use external online/offline tools like Shadertoy, Posh-Brolly, Kodelife, Bonzo or others to setup you main scene(s) / effects.

==== Ray-Intersetions vs Raymarching ====
In theory ideally you'd like to have multi-sample, multiple bounces, highly flexible, highly accurate raymarching
But in practice this is as of year (2024) still impossible to do realtime on most systems, therefore a choice has to be made between exact interesctions of primitives / raytracing vs ray marching. What are the differences in usecases and what are their pros and cons:

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Description !! Raymarching !! Ray-Intersection !! Examples
|-
| Domain-Repetition || Yes || No || TBA
|-
| Fast Multi-Sample || No || Yes || TBA
|-
| Twisting & Blending || Yes || No || TBA
|-
| Shape-Blending || Yes || ? || TBA
|}

==== Post processing: Don't miss the low-hanging fruit ====
Having a proper post processing step can greatly improve the overall visual quality of your intro. So in 4k space i would suggest a postshader pass at minimum, which depending on your size budget you can use for things like Vignetting, DOF, tone-mapping, anti-aliasing, chromatic abberation, etc.

But even if your 4k intro doesn't have a seperate post-shader pass, adding a bit of in-shader vignetting / gamma correction / tone-mapping to your intro are relative easy/cheap ways to improve visual quality of your intro, so why leave those options off the table?
For inspiration, You can check out the article at Here is an article at https://30fps.net/pages/post-processing/ for a few things you can do to improve your visuals in post.

== Sound ==
Here is an overview of various Synths / Music options.
Depending on the exact track, you are looking at approx 1k - 1.5k compressed for music for most 4k intros.

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Synth !! Type !! Description !! Size overhead !! Link
|-
| 4klang || Subtractive || Most popular softsynth || Medium (1 note, 1 instrument at 620b) || https://github.com/gopher-atz/4klang
|-
| Sointu || Subtractive || 4klang fork with improvements || Medium (1 note, 1 instrument at 562b )|| https://github.com/vsariola/sointu/
|-
| Oidos || Additive || - || Medium (1 note, 1 instrument at 600b) || https://github.com/askeksa/Oidos
|-
| Clinkster || FM || - || Medium (1 note, 1 instrument at 590b) || http://crinkler.net/Clinkster.zip
|-
| GLSL Softsynth || - || Write it yourself || Small/Medium (depends on usecase) || -
|-
| MIDI Player || MIDI || Using default Windows midi sounds || Small/Medium (depends on player/song complexity) || -
|-
|}

As a snapshot. Here is a list of intros from 2017 with the synth they used:
{| class="wikitable"
|-
| Absolute Territory || 4klang
|-
| Waillee || 4klang
|-
| final stage || Custom
|-
| Horizon Machine || 4klang
|-
| Unprogress || Clinkster
|-
| Faraday Future || 4klang
|-
| Alive Here Now, Forever || Oidos
|-
| Destination Unknown || Oidos
|-
| w a y f a r e r || 4klang
|-
| HAL 4000 || 4klang
|-
| Equilibrium || 4klang
|-
| visit berlin || 4klang
|-
| お花見 || 4klang
|-
| Gary Glitter || 4klang
|-
| Superfine || Oidos
|-
| Cycle Of Nature || Oidos
|-
| Oxano || Oidos
|-
| Those Who Leave || 4klang
|-
| Maintenance || Clinkster
|-
| Joia || 4klang
|-
| Back to the Roots || Oidos
|-
| Dropletia || Oidos
|-
| crystalline lord || 4klang
|-
| highrider || 4klang
|-
| Primordial Soup || Custom
|-
|}

== Compression ==
Crinkler is the most commonly used compression at the moment for 4K intros. It maximizes compression by taking over the linking process, setting up the windows header for you and if needed re-arrange the different segments of the code.

==== Crinkler reports ====
When using the <code>/REPORT:intro_report.html</code> feature, crinkler will generate a report and heatmap for your intro binary.
This is helpful to see how well your (shader)code compresses and where you can maybe gain a few more bytes.

==== Word about the resulting executable ====
Please note that when using crinkler in TINYHEADER mode, the resulting windows header will most likely trigger virus scanners / Microsoft Defender and mark it as suspicious content, which is a side-effect in recent years. Just exclude your work directory from this scan during development. Compo machines will run without these scanners too, but it is good practice to include a (slightly larger) safe version too in the final archive.

== Resources ==

==== Frameworks ====
* [https://github.com/armak/Leviathan-2.0 Leviathan 2.0]
* [https://github.com/in4k/isystem1k4k IQ's 1k/4k frameworks]
* [https://github.com/psycholns/TinyDX11 Psycho's 1k/4k framework]
* [http://www.kameli.net/compofillerstudio/ Compofiller studio]
* [https://github.com/yosshin4004/minimal_gl Minimal gl framework]
* [https://github.com/Beluki/4kGL 4KGL framework]
* [https://github.com/w23/bepct4k Bepct4k]

==== Raymarching ====
* [https://jamie-wong.com/2016/07/15/ray-marching-signed-distance-functions/ Introduction to Raymarching]
* [https://iquilezles.org/articles/distfunctions/ IQ's distance functions page]
* [https://mercury.sexy/hg_sdf/ Mercury's SDF toolbox]

==== High Quality 4K intros for Windows ====
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/371094/ Hexer (2025)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/355449/ XO (2024)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/331908/ Architectural Shapeshifter (2023)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/311778/ Stahlbeton (2022)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/278629/ The Vanishing of Ashlar (2020)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/266556/ Eisenerz (2019)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/185233/ Oscar's Chair (2018)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/174689/ Unprogress (2017)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/178895/ Waillee (2017)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/170744/ Horizon Machine (2017)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/91680/ Neuron (2013)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/102/ Elevated (2009)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/4846/ Atrium (2008)]

==== 4K intros for Windows with Sourcecode ====
* [https://github.com/friol/planetx Planet X (2025)]
* [https://github.com/vsariola/dipping-deep-dub-drop/tree/master Dipping deep dub drop (2025)]
* [https://github.com/faemiyah/faemiyah-demoscene_2024-08_4k-intro_olkiluoto_3-2-1 Olkiluoto 3-1-1 (2024)]
* [https://github.com/0b5vr/brainfiller Brainfiller (2024)]
* [https://github.com/TheNuSan/Lev4k/tree/DriftingShore Drifting Shore (2024)]
* [https://github.com/vsariola/every-datapoint Every Datapoint has a soul (2024)]
* [https://github.com/Krafpy/Island/tree/master/ Island (2024)]
* [https://github.com/LeStahL/ontrack-4k physics girl (2023)]
* [https://github.com/vsariola/fluxerator Fluxerator (2023)]
* [https://github.com/vsariola/adam Adam (2021)]
* [https://github.com/LeStahL/abstraction-confusion Abstraction Confusion (2021)]
* [https://github.com/faemiyah/faemiyah-demoscene_2019-08_4k-intro_region_de_magallanes Region de Magallanes (2019)]
* [https://github.com/demoscene-source-archive/oscar-s-chair Oscar's Chair (2018)]
* [https://github.com/w23/jetlag_appear Appear (2018)]
* [https://github.com/w23/nwep nwep (2017)]
* [https://github.com/keensky/hal4000 Hall4000 (2017)]
* [https://github.com/in4k/rgba_tbc_elevated_source Elevated (2009)]

==== Seminars ====
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-VDVgCBy-M Shader minification for 4k - 64k intros (2023)]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLhT06lwaig 4klang 101 - Basics (2019)]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir0vcmHkIm0 nstalling and trying out different synths for 4kb intros (2017)]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BqKH0XNN-g Size Restricted music isn't Rocketscience (2017)]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP__g_9FT4M Sound Design with 4klang, by Wayfinder (2015)]

==== Articles ====
* [ftp://ftp.untergrund.net/users/thygrion/sosp.zip Music in 4 Kilobytes - Size Optimized Synthesizer Programming]
* [https://iquilezles.org/articles/function2009/function2009.pdf Behind Elevated]
* [https://in4k.github.io/html_articles/Amietia%20%E2%80%A2%20The%20Making%20Of%20Oscar's%20Chair.html Making of Oscar's chair]
* [https://www.codeslow.com/2020/07/writing-winning-4k-intro-in-rust.html Article about writing a 4k intro using Rust]
* [https://in4k.github.io/wiki/aulds-4k-synth Article about writing a softsynth]

4K Intro

2025-11-03T23:44:19Z

Superogue:

== Introduction ==
This category is dedicated to modern 4K Intro development for [[Windows|Windows / Win32]], which consist of a small OpenGL/D3D/DX Framework, a softsynth and 1 or more pixelshaders. As such this won't be discussion legacy mesh techniques as few 4k intros make use of those techniques anymore.

Most Windows 4K Intros will be setup using C, sometimes in combination with assembler, or in some cases pure assembler. In general writing everything in assembler should give you a little more freedom in pushing/popping your function arguments and register usage.

Graphics are usualy done using OpenGL / GLSL or Direct3D/DX11.

=== Tools ===
There are a couple of options for tools, but generally these tools are often used
* Visual Studio / Vscode / GCC Compiler
* Crinkler or other external packer for compression ( https://crinkler.net )
* Shader minifier ( https://github.com/laurentlb/Shader_Minifier )
* Optional / Alternatively: NASM Assembler ( https://nasm.us/ )
* Optional: Local/Online GLSL Shader editing environment (e.g. Shadertoy, Kodelife, bonzo, etc.)
* Optional: Timeline/Camera tooling
* Optional: gnuRocket for timing.

== Intro design ==
When designing a 4k intro, it is best practice to consider each of the following aspects seperately:

* How much size budget do you want to allocate to render pipeline, sound, scene building, (post)shading, progression?
* Abstract vs organic vs scene/world-building
* Single scene vs multiple scenes
* Ray-Intersections or Ray Marching
* What kind of softsynth to use, or writing your own
* Render pipeline - Single or multipass (post/audio)shaders.
* Scene, Camera and progression handling
* Text - Do you want to include text and if so: Are you using WindowsGlyphs texture or SDF

=== Design pitfalls ===
Here are a few design pitfalls you should try to avoid if necessary.

==== Undirected raymarch experiments ====
Wiggly domain repetition shadertoy experiments, with or without walking glows, might be sufficient for a shaderjam or shader-showdown, but usually make a sub-par 4k intro. Don't do it, even if it has the compofiller banner on the slide.

==== The Rebranded cornell box - Just a shiny sphere bro! ====
Its great as a rendertest reference for your PBR / pathtracing tests, but it doesn't make a compelling intro.
The times you still see a reflective/pathtraced sphere and/or box with music mask as a 4k intro is staggering.
Sadly sceners still accept these rebranded cornell boxes as legit and even winning/cdc receiving intros, because shineys.
But my intuition says these will be looked upon like the countless early 2000s goa+bended sphers/torus intros that fail to stand the test of time.

==== Shitty synths ====
There are a few great intros out there that have great visuals but are ruined by glopawful synths or music. If you are not good at music yourself, find yourself a musician to work with.

== Size Budgeting ==
A general rule of thumb is to work above the target size for most of the development and work your way down when the production is closer to completion.

There are many ways to split the same bytes, here are the top-5 4K Intros at Revision 2024 that have made wildly different choices.
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Ranking !! Intro Title !! Progression / Storytelling !! Object complexity || Graphics Fidelity !! Sound !! Notes !! Link
|-
| 1 || Drifting Shore || Low || Low || Very-High || Low || Ray-Intersection + Pathtracing || https://demozoo.org/productions/342196/
|-
| 2 || Dubplate || Medium || Low || High || Very-High || SDF Text || https://demozoo.org/productions/342202/
|-
| 3 || Return to nature || High || High || Low || Low || - || https://demozoo.org/productions/342200/
|-
| 4 || Brainfiller || Low || Medium || High || High || GLSL Softsynth || https://demozoo.org/productions/342203/
|-
| 5 || Once Upon A Time In A Datacenter || High || Very-High || Low || Low || Custom CPU synthcode || https://demozoo.org/productions/342199/
|}

==== Graphics fidelity ====
TBA

==== Music budget ====
Got a musician to work with you and deliver a great tune? Don't accept it right out of the gate and feel free to argue about possible optimisations that can be done to the tune that will not affect the end-result massively. This is done by all of the better-known 4k intro developers and a good musician will be open to discussion and aware of the different limitation and choices that have to be made when it comes to size budgeting.

== Setting up your framework ==
A 4k framework / intro can be setup in either C or Assembler, or a combination of both.
You can either go with an existing framework (some of them are quite capable) or build your own taylored to your own needs.
Also remember that even though there are many more ways to save size than in for example a 1k intro, that every byte saved here is one you can spent / budget elsewhere.

* The groundlevel basics of a framework are discussed on the 1K Intro wiki at http://www.sizecoding.org/wiki/1K_Intro
* From here you can setup your audiobuffer add a softsynth of choice, or write your own (either in GLSL or Software)
* Most likely you'll like to add a few more function imports to properly pass uniforms to your shader.
* Optionally: Add another render-pass by feeding the output of the main shader to a post-shading process. This adds a few more texture calls to the framework
* Optionally: Add an init pass where you prepare (glyph) textures and other buffers you'd like to feed into your main shader.
* Optionally: Hook up a Scene/Camera/Timing system during development

== Graphics ==
Once you've budgeted and designed your intro, it is time to go to work.

==== Prebuild your scene in an external tool ====
For convenience and turn-around time, its perfectly fine to use external online/offline tools like Shadertoy, Posh-Brolly, Kodelife, Bonzo or others to setup you main scene(s) / effects.

==== Ray-Intersetions vs Raymarching ====
In theory ideally you'd like to have multi-sample, multiple bounces, highly flexible, highly accurate raymarching
But in practice this is as of year (2024) still impossible to do realtime on most systems, therefore a choice has to be made between exact interesctions of primitives / raytracing vs ray marching. What are the differences in usecases and what are their pros and cons:

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Description !! Raymarching !! Ray-Intersection !! Examples
|-
| Domain-Repetition || Yes || No || TBA
|-
| Fast Multi-Sample || No || Yes || TBA
|-
| Twisting & Blending || Yes || No || TBA
|-
| Shape-Blending || Yes || ? || TBA
|}

==== Post processing: Don't miss the low-hanging fruit ====
Having a proper post processing step can greatly improve the overall visual quality of your intro. So in 4k space i would suggest a postshader pass at minimum, which depending on your size budget you can use for things like Vignetting, DOF, tone-mapping, anti-aliasing, chromatic abberation, etc.

But even if your 4k intro doesn't have a seperate post-shader pass, adding a bit of in-shader vignetting / gamma correction / tone-mapping to your intro are relative easy/cheap ways to improve visual quality of your intro, so why leave those options off the table?
For inspiration, You can check out the article at Here is an article at https://30fps.net/pages/post-processing/ for a few things you can do to improve your visuals in post.

== Sound ==
Here is an overview of various Synths / Music options.
Depending on the exact track, you are looking at approx 1k - 1.5k compressed for music for most 4k intros.

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Synth !! Type !! Description !! Size overhead !! Link
|-
| 4klang || Subtractive || Most popular softsynth || Medium (1 note, 1 instrument at 620b) || https://github.com/gopher-atz/4klang
|-
| Sointu || Subtractive || 4klang fork with improvements || Medium (1 note, 1 instrument at 562b )|| https://github.com/vsariola/sointu/
|-
| Oidos || Additive || - || Medium (1 note, 1 instrument at 600b) || https://github.com/askeksa/Oidos
|-
| Clinkster || FM || - || Medium (1 note, 1 instrument at 590b) || http://crinkler.net/Clinkster.zip
|-
| GLSL Softsynth || - || Write it yourself || Small/Medium (depends on usecase) || -
|-
| MIDI Player || MIDI || Using default Windows midi sounds || Small/Medium (depends on player/song complexity) || -
|-
|}

As a snapshot. Here is a list of intros from 2017 with the synth they used:
{| class="wikitable"
|-
| Absolute Territory || 4klang
|-
| Waillee || 4klang
|-
| final stage || Custom
|-
| Horizon Machine || 4klang
|-
| Unprogress || Clinkster
|-
| Faraday Future || 4klang
|-
| Alive Here Now, Forever || Oidos
|-
| Destination Unknown || Oidos
|-
| w a y f a r e r || 4klang
|-
| HAL 4000 || 4klang
|-
| Equilibrium || 4klang
|-
| visit berlin || 4klang
|-
| お花見 || 4klang
|-
| Gary Glitter || 4klang
|-
| Superfine || Oidos
|-
| Cycle Of Nature || Oidos
|-
| Oxano || Oidos
|-
| Those Who Leave || 4klang
|-
| Maintenance || Clinkster
|-
| Joia || 4klang
|-
| Back to the Roots || Oidos
|-
| Dropletia || Oidos
|-
| crystalline lord || 4klang
|-
| highrider || 4klang
|-
| Primordial Soup || Custom
|-
|}

== Compression ==
Crinkler is the most commonly used compression at the moment for 4K intros. It maximizes compression by taking over the linking process, setting up the windows header for you and if needed re-arrange the different segments of the code.

==== Crinkler reports ====
When using the <code>/REPORT:intro_report.html</code> feature, crinkler will generate a report and heatmap for your intro binary.
This is helpful to see how well your (shader)code compresses and where you can maybe gain a few more bytes.

==== Word about the resulting executable ====
Please note that when using crinkler in TINYHEADER mode, the resulting windows header will most likely trigger virus scanners / Microsoft Defender and mark it as suspicious content, which is a side-effect in recent years. Just exclude your work directory from this scan during development. Compo machines will run without these scanners too, but it is good practice to include a (slightly larger) safe version too in the final archive.

== Resources ==

==== Frameworks ====
* [https://github.com/armak/Leviathan-2.0 Leviathan 2.0]
* [https://github.com/in4k/isystem1k4k IQ's 1k/4k frameworks]
* [https://github.com/psycholns/TinyDX11 Psycho's 1k/4k framework]
* [http://www.kameli.net/compofillerstudio/ Compofiller studio]
* [https://github.com/yosshin4004/minimal_gl Minimal gl framework]
* [https://github.com/Beluki/4kGL 4KGL framework]

==== Raymarching ====
* [https://jamie-wong.com/2016/07/15/ray-marching-signed-distance-functions/ Introduction to Raymarching]
* [https://iquilezles.org/articles/distfunctions/ IQ's distance functions page]
* [https://mercury.sexy/hg_sdf/ Mercury's SDF toolbox]

==== High Quality 4K intros for Windows ====
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/371094/ Hexer (2025)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/355449/ XO (2024)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/331908/ Architectural Shapeshifter (2023)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/311778/ Stahlbeton (2022)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/278629/ The Vanishing of Ashlar (2020)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/266556/ Eisenerz (2019)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/185233/ Oscar's Chair (2018)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/174689/ Unprogress (2017)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/178895/ Waillee (2017)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/170744/ Horizon Machine (2017)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/91680/ Neuron (2013)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/102/ Elevated (2009)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/4846/ Atrium (2008)]

==== 4K intros for Windows with Sourcecode ====
* [https://github.com/friol/planetx Planet X (2025)]
* [https://github.com/vsariola/dipping-deep-dub-drop/tree/master Dipping deep dub drop (2025)]
* [https://github.com/faemiyah/faemiyah-demoscene_2024-08_4k-intro_olkiluoto_3-2-1 Olkiluoto 3-1-1 (2024)]
* [https://github.com/0b5vr/brainfiller Brainfiller (2024)]
* [https://github.com/TheNuSan/Lev4k/tree/DriftingShore Drifting Shore (2024)]
* [https://github.com/vsariola/every-datapoint Every Datapoint has a soul (2024)]
* [https://github.com/Krafpy/Island/tree/master/ Island (2024)]
* [https://github.com/LeStahL/ontrack-4k physics girl (2023)]
* [https://github.com/vsariola/fluxerator Fluxerator (2023)]
* [https://github.com/vsariola/adam Adam (2021)]
* [https://github.com/LeStahL/abstraction-confusion Abstraction Confusion (2021)]
* [https://github.com/faemiyah/faemiyah-demoscene_2019-08_4k-intro_region_de_magallanes Region de Magallanes (2019)]
* [https://github.com/demoscene-source-archive/oscar-s-chair Oscar's Chair (2018)]
* [https://github.com/w23/jetlag_appear Appear (2018)]
* [https://github.com/w23/nwep nwep (2017)]
* [https://github.com/keensky/hal4000 Hall4000 (2017)]
* [https://github.com/in4k/rgba_tbc_elevated_source Elevated (2009)]

==== Seminars ====
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-VDVgCBy-M Shader minification for 4k - 64k intros (2023)]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLhT06lwaig 4klang 101 - Basics (2019)]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir0vcmHkIm0 nstalling and trying out different synths for 4kb intros (2017)]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BqKH0XNN-g Size Restricted music isn't Rocketscience (2017)]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP__g_9FT4M Sound Design with 4klang, by Wayfinder (2015)]

==== Articles ====
* [ftp://ftp.untergrund.net/users/thygrion/sosp.zip Music in 4 Kilobytes - Size Optimized Synthesizer Programming]
* [https://iquilezles.org/articles/function2009/function2009.pdf Behind Elevated]
* [https://in4k.github.io/html_articles/Amietia%20%E2%80%A2%20The%20Making%20Of%20Oscar's%20Chair.html Making of Oscar's chair]
* [https://www.codeslow.com/2020/07/writing-winning-4k-intro-in-rust.html Article about writing a 4k intro using Rust]
* [https://in4k.github.io/wiki/aulds-4k-synth Article about writing a softsynth]

4K Intro

2025-11-03T23:38:19Z

Superogue:

== Introduction ==
This category is dedicated to modern 4K Intro development for [[Windows|Windows / Win32]], which consist of a small OpenGL/D3D/DX Framework, a softsynth and 1 or more pixelshaders. As such this won't be discussion legacy mesh techniques as few 4k intros make use of those techniques anymore.

Most Windows 4K Intros will be setup using C, sometimes in combination with assembler, or in some cases pure assembler. In general writing everything in assembler should give you a little more freedom in pushing/popping your function arguments and register usage.

Graphics are usualy done using OpenGL / GLSL or Direct3D/DX11.

=== Tools ===
There are a couple of options for tools, but generally these tools are often used
* Visual Studio / Vscode / GCC Compiler
* Crinkler or other external packer for compression ( https://crinkler.net )
* Shader minifier ( https://github.com/laurentlb/Shader_Minifier )
* Optional / Alternatively: NASM Assembler ( https://nasm.us/ )
* Optional: Local/Online GLSL Shader editing environment (e.g. Shadertoy, Kodelife, bonzo, etc.)
* Optional: Timeline/Camera tooling
* Optional: gnuRocket for timing.

== Intro design ==
When designing a 4k intro, it is best practice to consider each of the following aspects seperately:

* How much size budget do you want to allocate to render pipeline, sound, scene building, (post)shading, progression?
* Abstract vs organic vs scene/world-building
* Single scene vs multiple scenes
* Ray-Intersections or Ray Marching
* What kind of softsynth to use, or writing your own
* Render pipeline - Single or multipass (post/audio)shaders.
* Scene, Camera and progression handling
* Text - Do you want to include text and if so: Are you using WindowsGlyphs texture or SDF

=== Design pitfalls ===
Here are a few design pitfalls you should try to avoid if necessary.

==== Undirected raymarch experiments ====
Wiggly domain repetition shadertoy experiments, with or without walking glows, might be sufficient for a shaderjam or shader-showdown, but usually make a sub-par 4k intro. Don't do it, even if it has the compofiller banner on the slide.

==== The Rebranded cornell box - Just a shiny sphere bro! ====
Its great as a rendertest reference for your PBR / pathtracing tests, but it doesn't make a compelling intro.
The times you still see a reflective/pathtraced sphere and/or box with music mask as a 4k intro is staggering.
Sadly sceners still accept these rebranded cornell boxes as legit and even winning/cdc receiving intros, because shineys.
But my intuition says these will be looked upon like the countless early 2000s goa+bended sphers/torus intros that fail to stand the test of time.

==== Shitty synths ====
There are a few great intros out there that have great visuals but are ruined by glopawful synths or music. If you are not good at music yourself, find yourself a musician to work with.

== Size Budgeting ==
A general rule of thumb is to work above the target size for most of the development and work your way down when the production is closer to completion.

There are many ways to split the same bytes, here are the top-5 4K Intros at Revision 2024 that have made wildly different choices.
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Ranking !! Intro Title !! Progression / Storytelling !! Object complexity || Graphics Fidelity !! Sound !! Notes !! Link
|-
| 1 || Drifting Shore || Low || Low || Very-High || Low || Ray-Intersection + Pathtracing || https://demozoo.org/productions/342196/
|-
| 2 || Dubplate || Medium || Low || High || Very-High || SDF Text || https://demozoo.org/productions/342202/
|-
| 3 || Return to nature || High || High || Low || Low || - || https://demozoo.org/productions/342200/
|-
| 4 || Brainfiller || Low || Medium || High || High || GLSL Softsynth || https://demozoo.org/productions/342203/
|-
| 5 || Once Upon A Time In A Datacenter || High || Very-High || Low || Low || Custom CPU synthcode || https://demozoo.org/productions/342199/
|}

==== Graphics fidelity ====
TBA

==== Music budget ====
Got a musician to work with you and deliver a great tune? Don't accept it right out of the gate and feel free to argue about possible optimisations that can be done to the tune that will not affect the end-result massively. This is done by all of the better-known 4k intro developers and a good musician will be open to discussion and aware of the different limitation and choices that have to be made when it comes to size budgeting.

== Setting up your framework ==
A 4k framework / intro can be setup in either C or Assembler, or a combination of both.
You can either go with an existing framework (some of them are quite capable) or build your own taylored to your own needs.
Also remember that even though there are many more ways to save size than in for example a 1k intro, that every byte saved here is one you can spent / budget elsewhere.

* The groundlevel basics of a framework are discussed on the 1K Intro wiki at http://www.sizecoding.org/wiki/1K_Intro
* From here you can setup your audiobuffer add a softsynth of choice, or write your own (either in GLSL or Software)
* Most likely you'll like to add a few more function imports to properly pass uniforms to your shader.
* Optionally: Add another render-pass by feeding the output of the main shader to a post-shading process. This adds a few more texture calls to the framework
* Optionally: Add an init pass where you prepare (glyph) textures and other buffers you'd like to feed into your main shader.
* Optionally: Hook up a Scene/Camera/Timing system during development

== Graphics ==
Once you've budgeted and designed your intro, it is time to go to work.

==== Prebuild your scene in an external tool ====
For convenience and turn-around time, its perfectly fine to use external online/offline tools like Shadertoy, Posh-Brolly, Kodelife, Bonzo or others to setup you main scene(s) / effects.

==== Ray-Intersetions vs Raymarching ====
In theory ideally you'd like to have multi-sample, multiple bounces, highly flexible, highly accurate raymarching
But in practice this is as of year (2024) still impossible to do realtime on most systems, therefore a choice has to be made between exact interesctions of primitives / raytracing vs ray marching. What are the differences in usecases and what are their pros and cons:

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Description !! Raymarching !! Ray-Intersection !! Examples
|-
| Domain-Repetition || Yes || No || TBA
|-
| Fast Multi-Sample || No || Yes || TBA
|-
| Twisting & Blending || Yes || No || TBA
|-
| Shape-Blending || Yes || ? || TBA
|}

==== Post processing: Don't miss the low-hanging fruit ====
Having a proper post processing step can greatly improve the overall visual quality of your intro. So in 4k space i would suggest a postshader pass at minimum, which depending on your size budget you can use for things like Vignetting, DOF, tone-mapping, anti-aliasing, chromatic abberation, etc.

But even if your 4k intro doesn't have a seperate post-shader pass, adding a bit of in-shader vignetting / gamma correction / tone-mapping to your intro are relative easy/cheap ways to improve visual quality of your intro, so why leave those options off the table?
For inspiration, You can check out the article at Here is an article at https://30fps.net/pages/post-processing/ for a few things you can do to improve your visuals in post.

== Sound ==
Here is an overview of various Synths / Music options.
Depending on the exact track, you are looking at approx 1k - 1.5k compressed for music for most 4k intros.

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Synth !! Type !! Description !! Size overhead !! Link
|-
| 4klang || Subtractive || Most popular softsynth || Medium (1 note, 1 instrument at 620b) || https://github.com/gopher-atz/4klang
|-
| Sointu || Subtractive || 4klang fork with improvements || Medium (1 note, 1 instrument at 562b )|| https://github.com/vsariola/sointu/
|-
| Oidos || Additive || - || Medium (1 note, 1 instrument at 600b) || https://github.com/askeksa/Oidos
|-
| Clinkster || FM || - || Medium (1 note, 1 instrument at 590b) || http://crinkler.net/Clinkster.zip
|-
| GLSL Softsynth || - || Write it yourself || Small/Medium (depends on usecase) || -
|-
| MIDI Player || MIDI || Using default Windows midi sounds || Small/Medium (depends on player/song complexity) || -
|-
|}

As a snapshot. Here is a list of intros from 2017 with the synth they used:
{| class="wikitable"
|-
| Absolute Territory || 4klang
|-
| Waillee || 4klang
|-
| final stage || Custom
|-
| Horizon Machine || 4klang
|-
| Unprogress || Clinkster
|-
| Faraday Future || 4klang
|-
| Alive Here Now, Forever || Oidos
|-
| Destination Unknown || Oidos
|-
| w a y f a r e r || 4klang
|-
| HAL 4000 || 4klang
|-
| Equilibrium || 4klang
|-
| visit berlin || 4klang
|-
| お花見 || 4klang
|-
| Gary Glitter || 4klang
|-
| Superfine || Oidos
|-
| Cycle Of Nature || Oidos
|-
| Oxano || Oidos
|-
| Those Who Leave || 4klang
|-
| Maintenance || Clinkster
|-
| Joia || 4klang
|-
| Back to the Roots || Oidos
|-
| Dropletia || Oidos
|-
| crystalline lord || 4klang
|-
| highrider || 4klang
|-
| Primordial Soup || Custom
|-
|}

== Compression ==
Crinkler is the most commonly used compression at the moment for 4K intros. It maximizes compression by taking over the linking process, setting up the windows header for you and if needed re-arrange the different segments of the code.

==== Crinkler reports ====
When using the <code>/REPORT:intro_report.html</code> feature, crinkler will generate a report and heatmap for your intro binary.
This is helpful to see how well your (shader)code compresses and where you can maybe gain a few more bytes.

==== Word about the resulting executable ====
Please note that when using crinkler in TINYHEADER mode, the resulting windows header will most likely trigger virus scanners / Microsoft Defender and mark it as suspicious content, which is a side-effect in recent years. Just exclude your work directory from this scan during development. Compo machines will run without these scanners too, but it is good practice to include a (slightly larger) safe version too in the final archive.

== Resources ==

==== Frameworks ====
* [https://github.com/armak/Leviathan-2.0 Leviathan 2.0]
* [https://github.com/in4k/isystem1k4k IQ's 1k/4k frameworks]
* [https://github.com/psycholns/TinyDX11 Psycho's 1k/4k framework]
* [http://www.kameli.net/compofillerstudio/ Compofiller studio]
* [https://github.com/yosshin4004/minimal_gl Minimal gl framework]
* [https://github.com/Beluki/4kGL 4KGL framework]

==== Raymarching ====
* [https://jamie-wong.com/2016/07/15/ray-marching-signed-distance-functions/ Introduction to Raymarching]
* [https://iquilezles.org/articles/distfunctions/ IQ's distance functions page]
* [https://mercury.sexy/hg_sdf/ Mercury's SDF toolbox]

==== High Quality 4K intros for Windows ====
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/371094/ Hexer (2025)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/355449/ XO (2024)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/331908/ Architectural Shapeshifter (2023)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/311778/ Stahlbeton (2022)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/278629/ The Vanishing of Ashlar (2020)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/266556/ Eisenerz (2019)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/185233/ Oscar's Chair (2018)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/174689/ Unprogress (2017)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/178895/ Waillee (2017)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/170744/ Horizon Machine (2017)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/91680/ Neuron (2013)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/102/ Elevated (2009)]
* [https://demozoo.org/productions/4846/ Atrium (2008)]

==== 4K intros for Windows with Sourcecode ====
* [https://github.com/friol/planetx Planet X (2025)]
* [https://github.com/vsariola/dipping-deep-dub-drop/tree/master Dipping deep dub drop (2025)]
* [https://github.com/faemiyah/faemiyah-demoscene_2024-08_4k-intro_olkiluoto_3-2-1 Olkiluoto 3-1-1 (2024)]
* [https://github.com/0b5vr/brainfiller Brainfiller (2024)]
* [https://github.com/TheNuSan/Lev4k/tree/DriftingShore Drifting Shore (2024)]
* [https://github.com/vsariola/every-datapoint Every Datapoint has a soul (2024)]
* [https://github.com/Krafpy/Island/tree/master/ Island (2024)]
* [https://github.com/LeStahL/ontrack-4k physics girl (2023)]
* [https://github.com/vsariola/fluxerator Fluxerator (2023)]
* [https://github.com/vsariola/adam Adam (2021)]
* [https://github.com/LeStahL/abstraction-confusion Abstraction Confusion (2021)]
* [https://github.com/faemiyah/faemiyah-demoscene_2019-08_4k-intro_region_de_magallanes Region de Magallanes (2019)]
* [https://github.com/w23/nwep nwep (2017)]
* [https://github.com/keensky/hal4000 Hall4000 (2017)]
* [https://github.com/in4k/rgba_tbc_elevated_source Elevated (2009)]

==== Seminars ====
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-VDVgCBy-M Shader minification for 4k - 64k intros (2023)]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLhT06lwaig 4klang 101 - Basics (2019)]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir0vcmHkIm0 nstalling and trying out different synths for 4kb intros (2017)]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BqKH0XNN-g Size Restricted music isn't Rocketscience (2017)]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP__g_9FT4M Sound Design with 4klang, by Wayfinder (2015)]

==== Articles ====
* [ftp://ftp.untergrund.net/users/thygrion/sosp.zip Music in 4 Kilobytes - Size Optimized Synthesizer Programming]
* [https://iquilezles.org/articles/function2009/function2009.pdf Behind Elevated]
* [https://in4k.github.io/html_articles/Amietia%20%E2%80%A2%20The%20Making%20Of%20Oscar's%20Chair.html Making of Oscar's chair]
* [https://www.codeslow.com/2020/07/writing-winning-4k-intro-in-rust.html Article about writing a 4k intro using Rust]
* [https://in4k.github.io/wiki/aulds-4k-synth Article about writing a softsynth]