The noise node has a texture sample mode (for optimisation) so that one is out. The procedural ones are fine.
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I’ll be keeping a close eye on this one! Sounds like a really cool challenge! Unfortunately I don’t have time to be in it myself.
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Dang, my first thought was to try to encode a bunch of information in the color channels, but y’all thought of that already 
Still, sounds like a fun challenge! I’ll see what I can come up with.
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Can we use particle systems or should the entire effect be made within one shader?
Yup, everything is good to use, as a normal game effect would be made, only constraint is that you can only input your one circular texture for your complete effect.
Hey Nate, can we have two version of the identical texture using different tiling settings? Like one clamped on X and Y, and the exact same texture with a wrapped version?
Yup! Offsetting in a shader, reapplying on itself, and any other shader math is good to use! As long as another texture isn’t involved!
Ok cool. I wasn’t sure if it would count as a second texture if it had different texture settings.
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FREEKN’ YES! 
Tis’ bout time!
Aw man… I gotta do this now. Can’t say I’ll put as much time as I would prefer, but I got to give this “VFX Puzzle” a shot.
SO! Just to make sure I understand this 'er challenge: The only -one- texture allowed. That -one- texture must be a uniform circle of either soft or hard edge. With this limitation (which essentially is a restriction of sorts on UV trickery), make a magical fire effect.
Everything else is fair game.
Question: Since a texture is not provided, when we collectively create our one texture I expect to see a subtle size diffrence. This is ok? We can make the Circle as big or small as we would like on the one texture?
Very interesting challenge! I’m going to follow very closely what people come up with.
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that’s one cool challenge!
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Let’s create a MASTER SHADER 
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It would be interesting, I will totally participate in this one!
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I like how the circle texture is optional even thought its the topic 
I can recommend getting inspiration from ShaderToy for this challenge. Tons of cool math shaders there
I like the topic! Textures are overrated and sampling them is expensive anyway, good luck all!
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I already implemented the Superformula in my favorite engine, which basically means I got a lot of different math shapes. Isn’t that cheating? 
Here is video of a few shapes you can get with the formula
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That should be fair game. We don’t allow pre-existing assets to be used but it gets hazy where extensive shader math lays in those terms.
It’s a learning platform meant to push our own limts, try new things, or just make cool things and share with others. A bunch of shader math creating custom shapes sounds pretty cool to me! Excited to see what else people come up with!
Yup, the size of the texture/circle doesn’t matter. At some point I imagine diminishing returns but it’s really up to you!
Sounds interesting. I’ve never been into any challange like this, only in Unreal Game Jams, so I think I’ll give this a shot.
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I don’t think it’s cheating. The data was one circle texture…the processing was whatever math.