boing - draws a bouncing ball like the ancient Amiga demo

boing [-display host:display.screen] [-window] [-root] [-install] [-visual visual] [-delay usecs] [-smooth] [-lighting] [-scanlines] [-speed] [-no-spin] [-angle degrees] [-size ratio] [-parallels n] [-meridians n] [-wireframe] [-fps]

The boing program draws a bouncing checkered ball on a grid.

This is a clone of the first graphics demo for the Amiga 1000, which was written by Dale Luck and RJ Mical during a break at the 1984 Consumer Electronics Show (or so the legend goes.) The boing ball was briefly the official logo of Amiga Inc., until they were bought by Commodore later that year.

With no arguments, this program looks a lot like the original Amiga demo. With "-smooth -lighting", it looks... less old.

boing accepts the following options:

-window

Draw on a newly-created window. This is the default.

-root

Draw on the root window.

-install

Install a private colormap for the window.

-visual visual

Specify which visual to use. Legal values are the name of a visual class, or the id number (decimal or hex) of a specific visual.

-delay usecs

The delay between frames of the animation, in microseconds: default 15000.

-smooth

Draw a smooth sphere instead of a faceted polyhedron.

-lighting

Do shaded lighting instead of flat colors.

-scanlines

If the window is large enough, draw horizontal lines to simulate the scanlines on a low resolution monitor.

-speed ratio

Change the animation speed; 0.5 to go half as fast, 2.0 to go twice as fast.

-no-spin

Don't rotate the ball.

-angle degrees

The jaunty angle at which the ball sits. Default 15 degrees.

-size ratio

How big the ball is; default 0.5 meaning about half the size of the window.

-parallels n

-meridians n The pattern of rectangles on the ball. Default 8x16.

-wireframe

Look crummy.

-fps

Display a running tally of how many frames per second are being rendered. In conjunction with -delay 0, this can be a useful benchmark of your GL performance.

DISPLAY

to get the default host and display number.

XENVIRONMENT

to get the name of a resource file that overrides the global resources stored in the RESOURCE_MANAGER property.

bsod(1), pong(1), xscreensaver(1), X(1)

Copyright © 2005 by Jamie Zawinski. Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell this software and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation. No representations are made about the suitability of this software for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.

Jamie Zawinski <jwz@jwz.org>, 19-Feb-2005.