NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

OPTIONS

-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.

-window

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

-root

Draw on the root window.

-delay number

Per-frame delay, in microseconds. Default: 20000 (0.02 seconds.).

-wireframe

Render in wireframe instead of solid. Default: render solid.

-fps

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

-tetra | -no-tetra

Whether to start the shape in the form of a tetrahedron. The default is to start as a sphere.

-color colorspec

Available options for colorspec are: cycle, flowerbox, clownpuke, chrome and #xxxxxx (i.e an (old-style) X color specification.) Default: cycle

-spooky n

This option controls a kind of interesting effect obtained by using unnormalized normal vectors (how's that for an oxymoron?) in OpenGL. A value of zero disables the effect. Other values vary the lengths of the normals proportionally. Okay, so it's not very spooky. Sue me. Default: 0

-complexity n

Valid options are 1, 2, and 3. Everything else is treated as though it were 2, which is the default. This controls the number of polygons in the 'thing'. A value of 1 yields 1024, and the values go up in powers of 4. (i.e. 4096, 16384.) note: There is an inherent lack of stability at lower complexity, which can cause the shape to devolve into a 'flying snotrag'.

-speed n

Controls how fast the blob moves around the screen. Default: 500.

-spherism, -hold, -distance, -damping

These options control the 'jigglyness'. The best way to explain these is to explain how jigglypuff works. Basically, the shape is a tetrahedron whose faces are subdivided into a number of triangles, forming a mesh. Each of the vertices of the mesh has two different forces applied to it: one proportional to its distance from the surface of a sphere, and one proportional to the difference of the distance to each of its neighbors in the mesh to a given ideal distance. In short, one tries to move the points into the configuration of a sphere, and the other tries to push them back into a tetrahedron. The catch is that the points have inertia, so they always overshoot their target, and hence they oscillate. The magnitudes of the two forces is controlled by the options 'spherism' and ´hold'; 'distance' specifies the distance the vertices seek to keep from their neighbors, with 500 corresponding to the size of the start tetrahedron. e.g. if you were to give the options '-tetra -spherism 0 -distance 500', you would end up with a stable tetrahedron. The 'damping' option can help to keep the blob from collapsing or flying apart. The option specifies the speed at which damping starts, hence lower values mean more damping. Defaults: spherism: 75; hold: 800; distance: 100; damping: 500.

-random

Probably the only parameter you'l ever need. Overrides almost all of the parameters with random values. The values affected are: speed, spherism, hold, distance, damping, spooky, color, wireframe and tetra. Default: off

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.

SEE ALSO

COPYRIGHT

AUTHOR