I got into programming at age 12 because of the Amiga demoscene. There was something magical those demos. I haven't touched any demoscene coding since I started to work proffessionaly.
Recently, I have been trying out vibe coding with Claude code. So I decided to revisit my childhood passion. I wanted to build something for my own children so they could experience that same magic. I hope to inspire them to be creative without needing to be master programmers yet.
BeatCanvas is the result. It’s a browser-based tool (part of a larger "Beat Suite") that turns SoundCloud tracks into reactive demo-scene visuals (starfields, tunnels, plasma, and some more modern effects) with real-time audio analysis.
The Tech & Workflow:
Built using WebGL and the Web Audio API.
I built everything with the help of Claude Code. I would never had taken my self the time to learn WebGL and all the other stuff needed to deliver this experience. It's all built in my spare time during the last month. But the project grew five times since my original idea.
The editor is designed to be "remixable". You can see how a scene is constructed and tweak the variables. Or copy any effect and update the code as you like. It even has built in support for LLM in the BeatCoder tool.
It's free, open, and mostly just a tribute to the era that made me want to be a dev in the first place. I’d love your feedback on the effects or the performance!
Beware of bugs and other early release issues =)
Show HN: BeatCanvas – A browser-based demoscene visualizer for SoundCloud · HackerTrans
Recently, I have been trying out vibe coding with Claude code. So I decided to revisit my childhood passion. I wanted to build something for my own children so they could experience that same magic. I hope to inspire them to be creative without needing to be master programmers yet.
BeatCanvas is the result. It’s a browser-based tool (part of a larger "Beat Suite") that turns SoundCloud tracks into reactive demo-scene visuals (starfields, tunnels, plasma, and some more modern effects) with real-time audio analysis.
The Tech & Workflow:
Built using WebGL and the Web Audio API.
I built everything with the help of Claude Code. I would never had taken my self the time to learn WebGL and all the other stuff needed to deliver this experience. It's all built in my spare time during the last month. But the project grew five times since my original idea.
The editor is designed to be "remixable". You can see how a scene is constructed and tweak the variables. Or copy any effect and update the code as you like. It even has built in support for LLM in the BeatCoder tool.
It's free, open, and mostly just a tribute to the era that made me want to be a dev in the first place. I’d love your feedback on the effects or the performance!
Beware of bugs and other early release issues =)