Difference between revisions of "4K Intro"

Revision as of 17:55, 13 April 2024

Introduction

This category is dedicated to modern 4K Intro development for 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.languages.

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
• Shader minifier
• Optional: Local/Online GLSL Shader editing environment (e.g. Shadertoy, Kodelife, bonzo, etc.)
• Optional: Timeline/Camera tooling
• Optional: gnuRocket for timing.
• Optional / Alternatively: NASM Assembler

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
• Render pipeline - Single or multi (post)shader.
• Scene, Camera and progression handling
• Text - Do you want to include text and if so: Are you using WindowsGlyphs texture or SDF

Setup

A 4k framework / intro can be setup in either C or Assembler, or a combination of both.

• 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
• 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

• Setting up your Framework
• Ray-Intersections vs Raymarching
• Multipass rendering
• Optional: Post processing

Sound

• Softsynth - Sointu ( https://github.com/vsariola/sointu/ )
• Softsynth - 4klang ( http://4klang.untergrund.net/ )
• Softsynth - Oidos ( https://github.com/askeksa/Oidos )
• Softsynth - Clinkster ( https://demozoo.org/productions/96592/ )
• GLSL Softsynth
• Win32 MIDI

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 /REPORT:intro_report.html 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.

Frameworks

• Leviathan 2.0
• IQ's 1k/4k frameworks
• Psycho's 1k/4k framework
• Compofiller studio
• Minimal gl framework

4K intros for Windows (with sourcecode)

• Every Datapoint has a soul (2024)
• Island (2024)
• physics girl (2023)
• Fluxerator (2023)
• Abstraction Confusion (2021)
• Hall4000 (2017)
• Elevated (2009)

Other Resources

• Making of Oscar's chair
• Article about writing a 4k intro using Rust
• Article about writing a softsynth