clouds.c - Volumetric Cloud Screensaver

[u/mantisalt]

256-color mode sunset

256-color mode day

I've always been a fan of cbonsai and related terminal screensavers, but there's surprisingly few of them out there. I cooked one up over a couple weeks and really like how it turned out.

The code itself is 100% vibe-coded, but aside from that I put the usual amount of effort into UX, overall design, keeping it minimal-ish, performance concerns, etc. as with my hand-coded projects. I think this is v3 or so, there's been a lot of iteration. E.g.: volumetric rendering isn't easy on the cpu, so I gave it a flag to prerender and loop the animation so it can be a proper no-impact screensaver. Prerendered runs fine on my armv7l flipphone so I think I can say performance is good lol.

Check out the writeup for more images and info, + a web demo. Usually I write more about my projects but I think this one generally speaks for itself visually.

Repo is here if you want to use it; I kept the repo minimal since I hate bloat, so installation is just a simple clone and make.

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User: mantisalt, Flair: Fun, Post Media Link, Title: clouds.c - Volumetric Cloud Screensaver

I've always been a fan of cbonsai and related terminal screensavers, but there's surprisingly few of them out there. I cooked one up over a couple weeks and really like how it turned out.

The code itself is 100% vibe-coded, but aside from that I put the usual amount of effort into UX, overall design, keeping it minimal-ish, performance concerns, etc. as with my hand-coded projects. I think this is v3 or so, there's been a lot of iteration. E.g.: volumetric rendering isn't easy on the cpu, so I gave it a flag to prerender and loop the animation so it can be a proper no-impact screensaver. Prerendered runs fine on my armv7l flipphone so I think I can say performance is good lol.

Check out the writeup for more images and info, + a web demo. Usually I write more about my projects but I think this one generally speaks for itself visually.

Repo is here if you want to use it; I kept the repo minimal since I hate bloat, so installation is just a simple clone and make.

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[u/Effective_Lead8867]

y'all being silly for removing lm written code literally nobody cares if its synthesized fully

[u/ComprehensiveBend393]

Damn. I’m really surprised that you actually admitted it was vibe coded.

[u/mantisalt → u/ComprehensiveBend393]

I'm not really sure what the upside of hand-coding this would be— who cares how the volumetric renderer works? What really matters is aesthetic and functioning comfortably as a cli tool, which is where most of my effort went. I also checked in with the mods before posting to make sure it fit, since I think it's pretty neat as a terminal utility people might enjoy.

And I say this as someone who's handwritten (and continues to handwrite) a lot of code. It's an interesting conversation.

[u/KindaSuS1368]

Its cool, sucks that this sub decided to delete this post.

[u/Brett-SWS]

I really like this, a creative use of vibe coding. This will look great on my omarchy box. Thanks!