For those who don't know, the heart-warmed commenter above, iangilman, is the creator of the original app 25 years ago as well as the new mobile app version! Incredible work Ian!!
I didn't write this demo (Joseph Huckaby did), but I wrote the original version that the demo is based on, and I wrote the new mobile version: https://pixfabrik.com/livingworlds/
> This new Living Worlds app is a modern recreation of a set of dynamic pixel art scenes first published in the early 90s as part of an "illustrated personal organizer" named Seize the Day, and seen as screenshots across the Internet since then. These scenes were created by Mark Ferrari, legendary artist from such classic games as Loom and The Secret of Monkey Island as well as the recent Thimbleweed Park. Now, 25 years later, Ian Gilman, the original software developer, has resurrected the Living Worlds, with Mark's support and additional code from Joseph Huckaby. There may be copycats, but this is the only authentic version from the original creators!
Wow! When I first saw this site a few years ago, I immediately thought the people involved have to be pixel art geniuses, but I didn't imagine it went this far back or had such an impressive pedigree. Legendary indeed...
All three are great projects! As @jrochkind1 pointed out, the key difference is that OpenSeadragon is oriented around non-map imagery whereas both Leaflet and OpenLayers are focused on maps. This leads to a number of subtle (and not-so-subtle) differences.
One key point is that OpenSeadragon allows you to set the zoom level precisely where you want it without rounding to the nearest tile level. Leaflet is getting this feature (they call it fractional zoom) in 1.0, but it's not released yet and it's been missing for a long time. If you are presenting a painting, for instance, and you want the contents to fill the available space on the page, this feature is essential.
Probably the biggest difference (as far as I'm aware) is that OpenSeadragon allows you to lay out and animate hundreds of high-resolution images in the same zoomable scene. For some examples of that in action, see:
Nice! Looking at the code, it seems that it's a very old version of OpenSeadragon, back when it was just called Seadragon. It's still looking good, so perhaps they've been adding their own extensions to it.
I don't know that I really have much to add about the color cycling; seems like everyone's covered the topic pretty well! Delightful to see so many people interested in these old techniques.
The thing that unfortunately gets a little lost in the demo is the way in which the color cycling (along with clever color palette fading and some sprite animation) was used as a means to create a world that looked like it was really alive for the whole month long… When you started the app up in the morning, you saw the sunrise. If you tuned in at night, you could see the fireflies. Each day the moon progressed in its cycle. Some days it was sunny, others it rained. Clouds slowly marched across the sky. The whole effect was quite enchanting. Regardless of if we use color cycling or not, I'd love to do something like that again.
