Plants and spores

Today I created the plants for eating and the spores which the plants give off for reproduction.  At the moment the plants create a lot of spores that don't do anything but go with the flow of fluid simulator.  When I get collisions done they can be eaten along with plants by the herbivorous species.  Also I have almost finished spores turning into a plant after a time but I need the collisions working to make sure that the plants don't end up growing on top of each other.  Now I am hungry so I am going home.

presentation picture

CCDN231 presentation project 3

The experience I propose is an expansion on my experiment with making tea that required the throwing of the ingredients into the pot and boiling it on the stove.  I plan to expand this by making a large funnel which people can throw water balloons filled with hot water and make their tea.  The reason the water balloons are full of hot water is reduce the 'down' time when the tea is brewing so that the experience of making tea is rebellious in mood for the greater part of the process.

The important thing to do when doing this experience is that the water balloons are thrown as hard as possible with little regard for where it lands.  This is why the funnel was built in order to make sure the tea is actually made.

Another option that I am trying to conceptualize further is that in the peer review one review asked what missing the pot did for the experience.  Perhaps upon further experimentation I will find this could be used to further my experience, but I am not entirely  sure how to add this to the experience yet.

Combining Code

Today I have managed to combine the code I have written with the code Ben wrote.  It works well enough with the flow affecting the species making them change direction, unfortunately it does not work as I feel it should.  I feel that to get the feeling that the user is affecting the game world the flow has to be able to accelerate the species over the max velocity of the species when they are just swimming.  I feel it will make the player more engrossed as they can affect the world more.

Success!!!

I have done it!!! The flow physics were not working properly for some reason, the x change was printing out as it should have but the y change stayed at zero for most of the time or had a really large number compared to the x change.  After long hours of looking through the code and writing traces and test methods I finally found what was wrong.  One of the variables was down as 'u' instead of 'v' as soon as I changed this the solver worked almost perfectly, the only things to fix up are size of the vectors, which at the moment are way to large.  At any rate when this worked I danced like a fool for abit.  It felt good.

The Character that Died

Once upon a time there was a character that we had planed for the project.  It was a spirit of sorts that followed the mouse around and caused objects in its wake to follow.  I spent two days working on making this character follow the mouse in a fashion that looked cool.  On the third day I met with my team mates and we decided together that the character was no longer needed so my hard work was for naught and the character was dead.

Now I have implemented a fluid solver in its place.  The scene is split into a currently 24 by 24 grid.  When the mouse moves the solver figures out how the mouse effects the square it is in contact with and how the squares around it are effected by it.  Each square stores their velocity which then can be picked up by a sprite in contact with that square and use that to find its acceleration.

Unfortunately the only way to get the program to run at a sufficient speed is to reduce the framerate to 30.  I will  find out a way to reduce the number of times the solver runs with out reducing the framerate but for now this allows me to have something that actually works.

Well it did work until Ben suggested I change all the arrays into vectors.  Now the program only applies acceleration to sprites in the y-axis and only if the mouse passes over the sprite directly.  This means the diffusion of the mouse effect is not working and the calculation for the x velocity of the square is not being calculated.  I will fix this tomorrow when I try to combine the code for the fluid solver and Ben M. code for flocking, which I am extremely happy with how it look.

CCDN 231

The first experiment I conducted was to cover every thing that needed to be accessed in paper so that in order to get to it the paper needed to be broken.  This was supposed to alter the mood of making tea to a more rebellious mood, as the breaking of the paper would require a violent movement and the breaking of the paper would make a noise that I hoped would induce a feeling of rebelliousness.  My belief was that rebellion is the breaking down of social constructs in order to create a new one.  While the action when I myself broke the paper seal was rebellious in feeling the noise produced was not as impressive as I thought it would be making a soft rip noise instead of a loud popping sound.  The aesthetic of the broken seal looked interesting but I would not say it invoked a mood of rebellion.

The second experiment was to pack up all the ingredients in individual packets and throw them into the pot from a distance.  This was to invoke a feeling of rebellion, through the action of throwing something.   Many of the images I associate with rebellion are of people throwing rocks or other things and I wanted to recreate that feeling.  

The final experiment was to chill all objects that are touched during the process of making tea.  The mood I was trying to convey from this was of austerity.  Cold, I believed was associated with austerity as the cold saps energy and is associated with winter, the season which is the most austere due to the fact it is when most plants loose their greenery and some mammals hibernate, it is a time of little food and bare landscapes.
The coldness did give make the process of making tea a less comforting experience and, due to the fact I had to make the tea with cold water to stop the cup from breaking, made a tea that was extremely weak and the sugar did not dissolve in.  While the end product cold be considered austere I would not say the process made me feel austerity to any great measure, it really just made it a less comfortable one.