Kaos
Kaos draws “cloudlike” pictures in color using an interative fractal algorithm. This fader comes to you thanks to Reinoud Lamberts, and I recommend you check out his excellent “Kaos” program which is available on Usenet and other places. Reinoud was nice enough to send me the algorithm he used, and I took some time speeding it up and making it use a bit less memory – actually the final code isn't related very much to his, but the algorithm is. However, this fader still will only work on machines with 32 bit Color QuickDraw – sorry all of you Plus and Classic owners! Kaos renders its data into an offscreen area, finally moving it onto the screen once the image has darkened enough. Kaos continues darkening the image and displaying it to you until either a timer expires (3 minutes) or an element of the image becomes fully intense. Unless you select otherwise in the settings dialog, you will see a small dot moving from the bottom of the screen to the top – this is a “progress” indicator to let you know how far away the first image will be. It takes about 15 seconds to generate the first picture on a Mac II class machine. This fader needs a good deal of RAM and a large amount of CPU – so this fader isn't a good one to leave running if you are doing background printing, downloads, or compiles at the same time. The current SIZE resource within in the fader provides enough RAM for a standard Apple RGB monitor to be rendered at half resolution. You may lower this value (which will result in a chunkier image) or increase it (which will result in a slightly smoother image) via ResEdit. Those of you with 32 bit displays will find you can actually decrease it a great deal (probably to around 40 or 50 K) because 32 bit displays do not require the large offscreen rendering area that 8 bit displays do.