M'Fing Dots on a M'Fing Grid

M'Fing Dots on a M'Fing Grid was an fxhash speedrun any% < 720 minutes project. Started at 10:30am Fri 5th August 2022, and finished at 10:30pm Fri 5th August 2022.

The repo for the code base can be found at: https://github.com/revdancatt/mfing-dots-on-a-mfing-grid - progress of writing code over the 12 hours can be seen in the commit history.

THE PROJECT

The idea behind the project was to take one of the simplest things in generative art, randomly coloured dots on a grid.

Many projects use dots on a grid as the base foundation for building more complexity. However, just the dots themselves are often considered too simple to have as a project on their own.

Given the limited amount of time for a 12-hour speed run, I decided to see if I could take something as simple as dots and inject just a little bit of GenArt personality into it. Adding textures, variations and controlled colour selection.

It's about as simple you can get with dots on a grid, without being simple. This is my [speed run] version, show me yours.

SPEED RUN

The tradition of doing a "speed run" on fxhash was started by Alexis André (@MacTuitui) and his "fxhash SpeedRun: any% < 960 minutes" project (#11995), described as "A performance piece. From cloning the template to a decent piece in less than 960 minutes".

Two more speed run collections have been created "Consequence Broadcast" (#13359) and "Beacon" (#17542) both by Amy Goodchild.

This is a fxhash speedrun any% < 720 run.

The any% is from game speed running and means "to get to the end with any % finished", meaning you don't have to 100% complete the game, just get to the end credits. For a gen art project it means you can use libraries and copy bits and bobs from your previous code, without having to do everything from scratch.

< 720 means that it's done in less than 720 minutes, in this case 12 hours.