Mandalas are square patterns. Think of a line that starts at the mandala’s center and extends straight out. Imagine swinging it as if it were a piece of rope, with a weight on the end to keep it straight. When the line dips and climbs, you’ll make an interesting surface. If the line itself ripples while you swing it, your surface will be even more interesting.

This is what making mandalas is all about. You control the ripple and the dipping. How many ripples from your hand to the end? That’s called the ripple frequency, and how many dips in a complete swing, that’s a frequency too.

When your mandala is made, the ripple and dip effects are added – if one is positive and the other negative you’ll tend to get a blank area. But if both are positive, you’ll have lots of colored fields of various density.

Your mandalas have a third effect, a combination of dips and ripples. All three effects are added to get the surface.

Advice: Until you have a good feel for dips and ripples, use zero (0) for your combination number. Also, use small
integers like 1 or 5 or 4.

Mandala was converted to C by R. Alan Monroe based on a BASIC game of the same name by Greg Yob as found in “What to do after you hit Return” by Creative Computing.