9 · The technique glossary
By the mid-2000s MilkDrop authors had invented something nobody planned: a citation system inside a filename field. Techniques circulated as named modules, attributed in the title of every preset that used them.
Aderrasi + Geiss - Airhandler (Painterly Relief Mix)
Eo.S. - glowsticks v2 03 music shifter edit b (Jelly V2)
Stahlregen & Eo.S + Geiss + ORB + Phat - Fruitsticks (Flexi-Tex Shader)
martin - the forge of isengard [flexi's moebius transformation vs. logarithmic spiral mix]
martin - lightning [Goody tunnel artifact tweak]That last pair is the sharpest version of it: the bracket credits a named mathematical technique attributed to another author, not a preset. Citation practice, invented independently, inside a text field meant for names.
The glossary is built from the 1,787 presets Stims ships.
How to read the numbers
Each entry gives the count of shipped presets whose title carries the marker, and the handles most often credited on those presets.
A byline is evidence of who applied a technique, not proof of who invented it. These counts tell you where a technique shows up and in whose company. To establish origin, you need the earliest datable appearance, and dating one takes forum timestamps and pack release dates the catalog does not carry. Entries below are marked accordingly:
- [A] — attribution is in the marker's own name (
Flexi-Tex,Stahl's Mirror Crossfire,Krash's beat code). The convention names the author. - [C] — a handle dominates the co-credit data strongly enough to be worth recording, without being asserted as the originator.
- [?] — open. The technique is real and the vocabulary is stable; who introduced it is not established here.
The glossary
| Technique | Shipped | Most-credited | What the marker signals | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Jelly (Jelly, Jelly V2/V3/V4, Reverse Jelly V3, bccn Jelly V4, [jelly5.5]) |
59 | Flexi (27), Geiss (21), Stahlregen (15) | [C] | The single largest named family in the catalog, and the only one with real version discipline — V2 through V5.5, plus a Reverse variant. A wobbling, viscous displacement of the feedback frame. |
| Painterly | 29 | Geiss (22), Aderrasi (5) | [C] | Softened, brush-like accumulation. Appears both alone and compounded (Painterly Relief Mix, Painterly Tendrils Colorfast). |
| Kaleidoscope | 20 | Geiss (15), Rovastar (6) | [?] | Angular mirroring, from the plain Kaleidoscope Mix through Flexi's kaleidoscope. |
Relief (Relief Mix, Bas Relief, Beetle Relief) |
18 | Geiss (17), Flexi (4) | [C] | Edge-lit embossing that reads as raised surface. Almost never appears without Geiss in the chain. |
Emboss (Emboss, Color Emboss Mix, Geiss Emboss Mix) |
11 | Geiss (10), Flexi (3) | [C] | Directional-difference shading. Geiss Emboss Mix is [A]. |
Saturation (Saturation Remix, Color Saturation Boosted) |
10 | Geiss (10) | [C] | Chroma push on the composite pass. Every shipped instance credits Geiss. |
Ripple (Ripples, Ripple Mix, Martin's ripple on water insertion) |
10 | Flexi (4), shifter (3) | [?] | Concentric radial displacement. The Martin's … variant is [A]. |
Composite (Geiss composite mix, Flexi composite) |
9 | Geiss (3), Flexi (2), ORB (2) | [A] | Names whose composite-pass treatment was grafted on. |
Grow Mix (Grow Mix, 2, 3, 3c - finally mirrored) |
9 | Geiss (7), fiShbRaiN (5) | [C] | Outward-scaling accumulation. The numbered series is a single lineage — see the witchcraft family. |
Crossfire (Stahl's Mirror Crossfire Mix) |
7 | Geiss (6), Mstress (2) | [A] | Mirrored cross-blend. The marker names Stahlregen. |
| Kali Mix | 6 | Aderrasi (6), Geiss (3) | [?] | An Airhandler branch specifically — the root of a three-deep derivation chain, and the deepest documented lineage in the catalog. |
| Filament Mix | 6 | Geiss (4), Stahlregen (1) | [?] | Thin, threadlike trails through the warp field. |
Glow Mix (also Everglow, Blur and Glow Remix) |
5 | Geiss (4), shifter (3) | [?] | Bloom on the composite. |
| LSB Mix | 3 | Geiss (3) | [?] | Low-bit manipulation for banding/noise texture. Rare and worth a dissection. |
| HPF | 2 | Eo.S. (1), Geiss (1) | [?] | High-pass filtering on the feedback frame. |
| Flexi-Tex Shader | 1 | Stahlregen, Eo.S., Geiss | [A] | Flexi's texture-shader technique, credited by name on a preset he is not a byline author of. |
Component credits are tracked separately from the mix vocabulary because they
cite code, not a look. parsePresetCredit lifts them out of the title into
componentCredits — see
preset-credit.ts.
| Component | Shipped | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|
Krash's beat code ((+Krash's beat code), (Krash's beat detection), + krash beatdetect) |
8 | [A] | A beat-detection routine that propagated by being copied into other authors' presets and credited inline. The scene's earliest component-library convention, and the clearest evidence that remixing here was open circulation with attribution — not, as is sometimes claimed, reverse engineering. |
Two more component credits sit in the author field rather than the title, so
they are handled by the handle registry instead:
martin [shadow harlequins shape code] and shadow harlequin - babylon warp drive resurrection call [Flexi's insertion of Martin's ripple on water shader]. Same practice, different field.
Compatibility markers
Not techniques, but part of the same filename grammar, and part of the authorship record:
| Marker | Shipped | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
(ATI fix) (6), (geiss flicker fix) (3), [fixed] (1) |
10 | The preset was modified to run correctly on another vendor's hardware. Unglamorous, uncredited-elsewhere labor. |
-ps2 / -ps3 / (ps2.0) |
9 | Shader-model variants of the same work, from the MilkDrop 2 transition. Stims strips the suffix for family grouping, so rogue wave -ps2 and -ps3 sit together. |
Open questions
The glossary is deliberately incomplete, and these are the gaps worth closing:
- First datable appearance of each technique. This is the question that turns [C] and [?] into [A]. It needs forum post timestamps and pack release dates, not filenames.
- Who named these? The vocabulary is stable enough that authors used it without explanation by the mid-2000s, so it was established somewhere — most likely the Winamp MilkDrop forum. Nobody appears to have written that down.
- Are the version numbers chronological?
Jelly V2→V3→bccn Jelly V4→[jelly5.5]looks like a series, andV2i2suggests internal versioning discipline nobody documented. Testable by diffing the shipped sources. - What did each one actually do? Every entry above is described from its visual effect. The presets are on disk; a dissection of the shipped source for Jelly, Relief, and Painterly would replace description with mechanism — and would fit as a sixth entry in Track 7 · Taste.
Regenerating these counts
The table is derived, not hand-maintained. To recount after a catalog change:
bun run catalog:techniques