NAME

boing - draws a bouncing ball like the ancient Amiga demo

SYNOPSIS

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]

DESCRIPTION

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.

OPTIONS

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 the current frame rate, CPU load, and polygon count.

ENVIRONMENT

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.

COPYRIGHT

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.

AUTHOR

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