forever components

Retro & Glitch

ASCII shimmer

Grid of ASCII ramp characters shimmers through interfering radial and plasma waves in green-teal hues; character density and wave center follow the pointer.

canvasmedium complexitymoderate motionpointer

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Live demo — the real component, running in a sandbox. One self-contained HTML file, zero dependencies. Open it on the canvas →
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When to use it

Retro/terminal-aesthetic hero backgrounds, hacker-themed UIs, or ambient screensaver displays on dark backgrounds.

When not to

Light-color UIs (background hardcoded dark green-black). Contexts requiring legible foreground text — the shimmer competes with readability.

Working with an AI agent

Every component ships agent-ready metadata. An example instruction for this one:

Change the character ramp from " .:-=+*#%@" to " ░▒▓█", shift the hue base from 140 to 220 for a blue palette, and slow the wave speed by changing t+=0.035 to t+=0.018.

Safe to edit

  • character ramp (chars variable)
  • wave speed (t += 0.035)
  • hue range (140 + v*60)
  • cell density divisor (30 / 46)
  • wave frequency coefficients (0.6, 0.35, 0.4)

Keep intact

  • visibilitychange pause / cancelAnimationFrame
  • prefers-reduced-motion guard (t freeze)
  • DPR-independent canvas sizing with cell cap
  • IIFE-free but scoped const/let block

Known limitations

  • No DPR scaling — canvas renders at CSS pixel resolution, looks soft on high-DPI displays
  • Cell size cap logic (divisor 46) may leave noticeable gaps at very wide aspect ratios

asciicanvasretroglitchplasmapointergenerative

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