Megacity is Classic with seven extra characters and a slower clock.
Seven marks. That is the whole difference.
It sounds small until you see one land in a column. The city glyph is a piece of infrastructure diagram in a field of katakana, and because this style runs only 40 columns the characters are the largest in the app, so you actually read it as a shape rather than noise.
The seven marks
None of these were traced from a film frame or an existing asset. They are defined by geometric code in the generator, using only straight segments, 45 degree diagonals, rings and quarter arcs.
| Slice | Mark | Grammar |
|---|---|---|
| 57 | orbital | Octagonal orbital with radial routes |
| 58 | street grid | Orthogonal street network |
| 59 | double diamond | Two diamonds joined by connectors |
| 60 | districts | Four blocks around a central cross |
| 61 | switchyard | Trunk line with staggered branches |
| 62 | hub | Hexagonal hub with five spokes |
| 63 | rivers | Paired zigzag rivers with bridges |
A claim you can actually verify
Slices 0 through 56 of Megacity64 are byte-identical to Trilogy57. Not visually similar. Identical bytes, and there is a test that regenerates both families twice and fails if that prefix ever drifts.
That matters more than it sounds. It means Megacity is provably Classic's alphabet plus seven additions, rather than a second alphabet that happens to look the same.
The numbers, if you want to check them
| Setting | Value | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Rain model | layered | Three depth planes, as Classic |
| Columns | 40 | The widest cells and largest glyphs in the app |
| Animation speed | 0.50 | Just over half Classic's 0.90. The city marks get time to read |
| Fall speed | 0.30 | Row advance multiplier, unchanged from default |
| Raindrop length | 0.75 | Default trail length |
| Cycle speed | 0.03 | Default mutation rate |
| Bloom | 0.70 | Default glow, 0.10 high pass |
| Cursor color | #C1FF75 | Default leader color |
| Cursor intensity | 2.00 | Default |
The palette
Identical to Classic. Megacity changes the alphabet and the clock, not the color.
The glyph file
Slices 64, of which 57 are the Trilogy prefix
Bytes 1,048,576
SHA-256 33011bffdef2e9238c49d64d36d45624cbefc252584c0e5534ea4403fcc36a16
Source M PLUS 1 Code 700 for the 57, geometric code for the seven
Rebuild xcrun swift scripts/generate-trilogy-megacity-coverage.swift
On your display
This style renders natively at 3840 by 2160 and 5120 by 2880. The glyph atlas picks its mip level from the real backing scale, so characters stay sharp on a 5K panel instead of going soft.
Refresh rate is handled separately from simulation rate. The rain advances on its own fixed schedule and the shader interpolates between the current state and the previous one at presentation time, so a 120 Hz display gets 120 smooth frames without the rain running faster. On battery or under thermal pressure the app drops to 30 or 15 fps and turns bloom off.
Common questions
What is the Megacity glyph in The Matrix?
The Machine City appears as a glyph in the opening titles of The Matrix Revolutions. Megacity adds seven original marks in that spirit, built from geometric code rather than traced from the film.
Why does Megacity use only 40 columns?
Fewer columns means wider cells and larger characters. At 40 columns the seven city marks are big enough to read as diagrams instead of blurring into the field.
Is Megacity just Classic with extra characters?
Close. It shares Classic's palette and layered model, runs at half the animation speed, and its glyph family's first 57 slices are byte-identical to Classic's. The seven city marks are the only visual addition.
Seven characters
Everything else in this style is Classic. Same palette, same planes, same 57 letters.
Seven marks, drawn out of straight lines and quarter arcs, and suddenly a city is falling past your icons.