Files
ioccc/2018/giles
Cody Boone Ferguson 826a6eb01a Typo fix menu item for location of authors
It should be 'Location of winning authors' (as it is now) but by mistake
there was an extra space ('Location of winning  authors'). Obviously
this is a huge commit as every html file with a menu (almost all) had to
be updated.
2024-06-17 05:57:52 -07:00
..
2020-12-30 16:57:03 -08:00
2020-12-30 16:57:03 -08:00
2023-07-06 21:49:38 -07:00
2023-03-07 20:24:32 -08:00
2020-12-30 16:57:03 -08:00

To build:

This entry requires SDL2 to be installed. See FAQ 3.8: How do I compile an IOCCC entry that requires SDL1 or 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.
  • double is an IEEE 754 floating-point type and sizeof(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.