Pre-Submission Reflection DSDN 142

The last few changes I made were the addition of varying buzzing noises that played when the fireflies were consumed. The differences between the noises were subtle but enough to stop them getting tedious. I also worked on getting the desaturated background to come forth with a 'tint' effect but I couldn't figure out a reoccurring problem with the masks so I had to abandon that idea. The overall presentation is satisfactory though. The sounds really add to the atmosphere of the program and the loneliness from consuming all the fireflies still creeps in which is good. I am pleased with my final toy, even if it didn't have all the features I had originally planned. The user plays a lot more of a passive role in the final application than my original programs which makes the interaction more of an experience than a manipulation of effects.

"Melancholy" Sounds Like A Vegetable

To really bring out the mood of my application I've adjusted the code so that the glow of the fireflies is relative to how many are left. The less alive the more dimly their lights :( Another feature I am in the process of adding is a desaturated backdrop that begins to cover up the original colour image so the environment gets more and more depressed the more fireflies die.

I thought this would be an interesting approach to take as most games reward users in one way or another for interacting with them but this application makes them feel guilty instead.

Ambience

There's something so peaceful about the soft chirping of crickets. I spent some time while editing my mouse toy to find a background soundtrack that would add atmosphere.
http://www.freesound.org/people/Arctura/sounds/39829/
http://www.freesound.org/people/eric5335/sounds/53380/
http://www.freesound.org/people/reinsamba/sounds/14853/
http://www.freesound.org/people/greysound/sounds/32655/
Most of the ones above were too busy or dominant to use as background noise but I did stumble across this one; http://www.freesound.org/people/dobroide/sounds/20575/
It has the kind tone I want. Now all I need to do is find a format for it that'll play...

The First Century

Happy 100th post VicDesign! My gift to you is a picture of a swamp I drew! I hope you like it :)

This is the pimpin' new background for my fireflies. It's a bit less crappy than the initial one but hey, you have to start somewhere. The ink images above were the tree and shrub shapes I used in the computer render, drawn with those pens that look like the offspring of a vivid and a whiteboard marker.

And her are the little flies playing in their new home. I adjusted the rate at which their glow fades behind them so that the backdrop is visible for longer. I also made it so that whenever there are less than 150 fireflies alive  at any one time it will spawn a new one just off one of the four corners every four seconds. This means the interaction never ceases and that as new fireflies spawn the predator's aura needs to decrease as well.
I'm thinking of trying to make the black mask slightly transparent, even at its darkest, so the silhouette of the trees and such will be slightly visible. I'm also going to explore a feature that makes the predator ill if he eats too many fireflies, making him follow less efficiently, appear slightly greener and every so often vomit. This would add more character to the predator and provide a bit of humour aside from the macabre wings falling to the ground.

Character Building Episode 1

In the process of making my processing (aye!) application more exciting I constructed a cartoonish swamp background for my fireflies to dwell in and with Steven's help made a glowing aura around the fireflies that revealed the background (using masks).

I tried to make the mask a fading gradient but with so many fireflies on-screen the program slowed down to the point of uselessness. An addition I could make to the environment, apart from refining the background image, could be to make the background that isn't illuminated ever so slightly transparent so the user can see hints of something behind the bugs and is encouraged to explore.

Apart from some adjustments to fields such as the repulsion radius of the predator and his glow radius I also made a feature where for every firefly he consumes his glow becomes brighter, illuminating a wider area. This gives the user an incentive to eat more fireflies which would otherwise remove the background entirely.

Programming The Food Chain

After talking to my fellow coders for inspiration on how to develop my idea they said my predatory bug should be more dominating on-screen as he looked too meek. After fixing this and the square repulsion problem (HUZZAH! distance functions) I made it so that instead of adjusting the repulsion radius manually for s***s and gigs the predator actually eats fireflies it moves over, deleting them, and the remaining ones become more afraid of him and get repelled further. A particular idea that is just as excellent as it is morbid was to have a pair of wings fall down from where the flies get eaten.

Steven made a point that I need to bring more character to the interface by having more stuff happen on its own e.g. the predator burping or vomiting if he eats too much, or his speed being reduced the more he consumes.

The Ol' Switcheroo

Looks like I'm switching to another idea. This is good though; it means progress. My jar/firefly program was having a glitch-fit each time the mouse was clicked several times repeatedly, which is roughly the third or fourth thing an inquisitive user will try. This created some funky patterns but overall was unacceptable.

After talking to Angela we decided that the most interesting and 'realistic' aspect of my code was the behaviour of the firefly objects. The way the jars were presented didn't make much sense so I'm swallowing my pride and ditching the jars entirely.
My new direction is to have the cursor replaced by a giant firefly that can spawn smaller ones from it. The way the user moves the 'Mama', combined with clicks, influences the other fireflies behaviour. We'll see where this one goes...

Fireflies

As adorable as this video is it's only really the last couple of minutes I'm interested in as it gets dark enough that you can see the fireflies clearly. 

One thing that I didn't realise is that their glow isn't consistent and is more of a brief flash than anything. I think for the sake of my program I will keep the glow a constant thing so that users can see the fireflies flying around the screen. If it were just a simple flash then a large portion of the program would be missing.

Their bizarre bodily function results in something truly beautiful :)

A New Direction to Success... Hopefully

My new take on my fireworks code is to be about spawning fireflies. The interaction is when the user clicks on the screen a 'jar' begins to grow for as long as the mouse is held down. As it grows it begins to become more red and the tension builds inside it, causing it to vibrate. When this tension gets too great or the mouse is released the jar holds for a moment then bursts.

While the jar grows it spawns fireflies that at this point in time merely fall to the ground but once I figure out how will orbit the mouse as long as it is held down. Once the mouse is released the fireflies are free to roam as they please.

At the moment there is a problem with the fireflies in that to get them to work it requires a pair of nested 'for' loops that slows the program right down (as it's trying to run the jars as well), visible in the picture above with the unwanted trails behind the falling fireflies. I'll need to look into this to get it to run as smoothly as possible.

Explosions, Puppetry and Ripples

Before class today I worked on my fireworks program a bit more and managed to create a randomly coloured firework blast that originated where the mouse was clicked with the right button.

While the effect of this was entertaining, it was quick to understand and was limited to having only one explosion on-screen at any time, any new click overriding the old one. It didn't take long lose interest in this aspect of the program but overall it added to the diversity within it, especially since the sparkler could be run at the same time. This showed me a point that was brought up in class; while simple effects are easy to lose interest in on their own, when they are combined with others it generates a whole new field for users to explore. A way I would take this further if I chose to would be to make an explosion influence the direction the sparks move in by pushing them away from the explosion's centre.
During the actual tutorial we ran an exercise that required us to pair off and develop a person to person interface. My partner Ben and I based ours on puppetry; the way the user moved affected the 'puppet' in different ways. Some people used gestures to measure the strength or level of output. Others made their input verbal; different words having different effects. In this exercise we had a look at what ones were entertaining for the longest and how one input could lead to multiple effects or multiple inputs to one effect. The most interesting interactions were the one that had multiple inputs with interwoven effects so the user had more to explore.
This inspired a new take on my current 142 project that would still use the spark physics I've developed but in a new way. I have yet to figure how to code this but it's on its way, as is a storyboard to explain my new idea. As for right now here is a cool way of indicating where the mouse was last clicked that I developed;

Yay.

Child's Play

While playing with this processing application felt like being a child again, writing the code had the opposite effect. It's simple and easy to learn and won't hold a person's attention for too long but it's more the discovery of the effect that I'm pleased with. I can customise it to a fair degree so it is likely that if I stay on my current path I will end up using it or something like it in my final application.

 There were several directions this particular piece of code could go. One was that when the mouse is released all the sparks chase down the cursor and detonate if they touch it. Another could be that these are actually fireflies that buzz around when 'released' by the mouse and behave relative to what the mouse is doing I'll put some study into their behaviour as well as seeing what else I can accomplish with variants of this code.

More Pretty Pictures

I've been considering what type of interaction my mouse toy should explore. My inner male instinct cried for destruction so a couple of ideas were roused. The first was fireworks. Pretty explosions varying in colour that detonate centred on the mouse click and fade away. If the mouse was clicked and dragged it would release sparks and a trail of light, much like a sparkler.

The entertainment would come from the ability to draw temporary pictures with the fading drag and to madly blast away at the screen creating a chaotic scene. It is simple but there is room for development.
An idea that sprouted from this one was that there could be a bunch of shapes falling from the top of the screen and if you click them they explode and disappear but if they reach the bottom a bar is raised that if it reaches the top you lose. A score could be kept to measure your abilities. How to actually program this, I'm not too sure...

Playtime in 142

You may have called it "interval" at High School but it was still playtime at heart. Our new project, the mouse 'toy', focusses on the difference between interaction and control, what makes interaction fun and how it can be used as an engaging form of control. Initial thoughts are that control is the ability to manipulate things at will, interaction is a more limited amount of influence where there is a system that you can adjust parameters for different effects but overall the system is stable by itself. The fun part of interaction comes from either the freedom to explore or the pursuit of a goal. Given a system it is fun to explore the limits of the interaction; what happens if I do this? What happens if I press these? How far can I push that? The excitement comes from discovering the unknown, bettering your understanding of it and then proceeding to push it to it's limits, or your own. Adding a challenge or a goal will encourage users to really test the interaction. How well can they master it?
During today's studio we played with code that allowed for user interaction through the use of mouse variables. This first test track the circle's movement across the page but it was dragged back by whenever the mouse was clicked;

 The further to the right of the screen you clicked the faster it was dragged back.

I then put in the same code but for the y values as well so its base movement was diagonally down at 45 degrees;

So relative to where you clicked the circle's path was adjusted.

 ...yeah...

This next series focussed on giving the user even less control. The circle was now attracted to the mouse instead of repelled by it and the x and y coordinates had a random value reassigned to them every cycle relative to their last position. The results were that when the user tried to drag it around the screen sometimes it resisted.

Lastly this one was more a play on how colour can make an interaction more exciting. This simple circle followed the mouse around the screen when it was dragged and left a little ghostly trail behind it where it went. The faster the drag the longer the tail got;

It was kinda cute...