Acid Warp for Android / iOS / iPadOS / macOS / Windows / Linux

What is Acid Warp?

Acid Warp is an eye candy program which displays various patterns and animates them by changing the palette. Originally it was an MS-DOS / Windows program by Noah Spurrier and Mark Bilk and was made in 1992/1993.

This is a fork by Matthew Zavislak based on the previous SDL2-based port by Boris Gjenero to the SDL 1.2 / 2 library. That, in turn, is based on the Linux SVGALib port by Steven Wills.

This fork can be built for:

• Android phones, tablets, and TVs (10+)
• iOS phones and iPadOS tablets (15.6+)
• macOS devices (11.5+)
• Linux devices (22.04+)
• Windows devices (Windows 10+, DirectX 11+)

Platform-Specific Build Instructions

For detailed build instructions for each platform, see:

Platform	Status / Download Link
Android
iOS / iPadOS
macOS
Linux
Windows

Using the program

On-Screen GUI Controls (All Platforms)

Click or tap anywhere on the screen to show/hide the on-screen control overlay:

Keyboard Controls (Android TV or devices with keyboards)

Use the following keys or remote control buttons to control the program:

Key	Action
Up	Animate faster
Down	Animate slower
Left	Lock/unlock on current pattern
Right	Switch to the next palette
Select or N	Switch to the next pattern
P	Pause / Resume animation
Back	Exit the app
Home	Exit the app

Updating SDL3 and SDL3_image

SDL3 and SDL3_image versions are centrally managed in the SDL_VERSION and SDL3_IMAGE_VERSION files at the repository root. SDL3 and SDL3_image artifacts are automatically downloaded during builds and are not checked into version control.

To update SDL3 and SDL3_image across all platforms:

• Update the version in SDL_VERSION (e.g., 3.2.26)
• Update the version in SDL3_IMAGE_VERSION (e.g., 3.2.4)

Build systems will automatically download the new versions:

• Android: Gradle downloads SDL3-{version}.aar and SDL3_image-{version}.aar automatically before build, removing old versions
• iOS/macOS: Xcode Run Script build phase checks the installed SDL3.xcframework and SDL3_image.xcframework versions and automatically downloads/updates if needed
• Linux/Windows: Installed via package managers

Note: Steps 2 and 3 have comments in their respective files pointing to each other as a reminder to keep them in sync.

Checking Installed SDL3 and SDL3_image Versions (Local Development)

To check which SDL3 and SDL3_image versions are currently installed on your system:

• Linux:
  • pkg-config --modversion sdl3
  • pkg-config --modversion SDL3_image
• Windows (MSYS2):
  • pacman -Q mingw-w64-x86_64-sdl3
  • pacman -Q mingw-w64-x86_64-sdl3-image

Version History (see commit history for full details)

5.0.0

• Standardize version numbering across all platforms, continuing from the original MS-DOS version 4.2 (1993).
• Update to SDL 3.2.26 and SDL3_image 3.2.4.
• Add GUI controls

1.3.0

Add iOS / iPadOS / macOS / Windows / Linux support; support logo display on smaller screen sizes; other minor enhancements.

1.2.0-android

Add a new pattern created by the Anthropic Claude agent and also some minor code cleanups.

1.1.0-android

Adds screen orientation change handling and minor cleanups targeting initial Android phone & tablet support.

1.0-android

Uses SDL 3 and OpenGL ES 2.0, and features a streamlined and enhanced version targeted at Android TV.

Additions / Enhancements

• Increase logo size (when screen size allows)
• Smoother "next" handling - simply treat as a timer expiration, which enables the same fadeout/fadein transition as would happen without "next" being issued
• Add Android TV remote support (See above)
• Fix most warnings related to int/long/double handling

Removals

• Support for anything but Android, iOS, iPadOS
• Compatibility with SDL before 3
• OpenGL support other than ES
• Lookup table usage for pattern layout
• Single-threaded pattern layout generation
• CPU-based palette rotation
• Icon generation (but add bitmap for generating 16x9 logo for use in icons)

Further resources

• For more information about the original DOS version, see: noah.org.

• For more information about the Linux port, see: ibiblio.org.

• For more information about the SDL port, see: dreamlayers/acidwarp

• For more information about the Amiga port, see: aminet.net

• For more information about SDL, see: libsdl-org/SDL.

• For more information about Acid Warp's history, see: eyecandyarchive.com.

Note: there are alternate spellings: Acidwarp, AcidWarp. We use Acid Warp here, based on the original DOS README.

License

• As this is a descendent of Steven Will's "AcidWarp for Linux" which was GPL licensed, this too is and must be also GPL licensed. See gpl-3.0.md

• Note that the original project predated modern open-source licensing and was described as "All Rights reserved. Private Proprietary Source Code", and:

  • v. 3.22: This program is free and public domain. It may not be used for profit. (1992)
  • v. 4.2 : This is free software. (1993)

Thanks

• Many heartfelt thanks to all previous authors especially (of course) Noah.
• Kudos to the Anthropic team as Claude was quite useful during the porting process.
• Additional thanks to Scott Ostler, for his mentoring with the iOS / iPadOS / macOS ports.