Landon Curt Noll
f29b37e49a
Prepare for the winners of **IOCCC28**. > However these are not the 2024 droids you are looking for. :-) The HTML menu (both JavaScript and non-JavaScript) has been updated. The `Status -> Rules and guidelines' have been replaced with two separate menus `Status -> IOCCC rules` and `Status -> IOCCC guidelines`. Added a new top level `social.html` page: built from a new `social.md`. Sorted rules for building specific web pages in the top level `Makefile`. Added `make social` to make the `social.html` page from `social.md`. The `bin/gen-top-html.sh` now is able to process a argument of **social** to process the new top level `social.html` page. Changed `bin/gen-top-html.sh` VERSION from "2.0.0 2025-03-13" to "2.0.1 2025-07-25". Below `About -> Home page` a new `About -> IOCCC social media` menu item as added. Because the menu change touched every HTML file, we changed the general copyright date range for HTML files from "1984-2024" to "1984-2025" due to the extensive changes made for **IOCCC28**. Those markdown files that were modified in 2025 had their copyright date range also changed from "1984-2024" to "1984-2025". Rebuilt tarballs and sitemap due to the extensive HTML rebuilding. Ran `make update` to perform the above.
To build:
This entry requires SDL2 to be installed. See the FAQ on "SDL1 and SDL2" if you don't have it installed and don't know how to do so.
make
To use:
./prog
Try:
./prog ioccc.txt
./prog prog.c
./prog sand.txt
./prog sand.alt.txt
NOTE: these invocations will take quite some time to finish.
Judges' remarks:
Can you explain the behavior of the program when ioccc.txt is given to it as input?
How would the description of the state machine look like when translated from Polynomish to English?
Author's remarks:
Remarks
This entry graphically displays a simulation of sand falling. It uses SDL to draw the interface.
The code makes the following assumptions about the underlying system:
- SDL2 is installed from https://libsdl.org or your package manager.
doubleis an IEEE 754 floating-point type andsizeof(double)==8.- The compiler supports the C99 standard.
In order to simulate the motion of the sand, a cellular automaton is used. The
state transition table is not stored directly. Instead, the program stores the
coefficients of a polynomial that map each state to the correct one. These
coefficients are stored as raw hexadecimal in the V[] array, and they are
reinterpreted as doubles when used. This allows more numeric precision in fewer
characters (base 16 > base 10), and makes the purpose of the array less clear.
The code is laid out graphically as a bucket pouring sand, and it is far easier to observe this high-level layout than the code's actual function.
The preprocessor is used to both obfuscate the code as a whole and abbreviate the calls to SDL. Additionally, throughout the code, the variables were named so that they are short and easily confused with each other.