Archive for June 2007
It is very simple. The player controls the movement of the white dot, and the player’s distance to the fixed coloured circles controls the music in various ways. Essentially, you get to explore the space.
I dropped the fill out of the circles as shown in the second image so as to better distinguish between player and environmental objects. I’d like to see other features in there affecting the music – like clouds floating above the environment that the player can stand underneath to further affect the sound. Because the coloured circles have fixed locations you don’t have the ability to layer the effects on the sound, other than to stand near two of them. Moving objects give more variability.
video recording to come…
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Motivating people to experience the music generator
0 Comments | Posted by psiba in Computational Arts, projects
During the development of PixelMaker I found that the experience falls flat when the mechanics of the piece are completely exposed. It makes for a nice tool, but I’m not looking to make Photoshop. So I don’t want to give the user complete control for the sound generator either. I think Electroplankton faced an uphill battle in the marketplace because its fails to provide a depth of motivation for play. I don’t want to get into it here, as its a shame it didn’t succeed, but in terms of a game, Electroplankton fails to insight player motivation. I like to provide motivation for players to experience the piece. I think the quintessential exploration mechanic of adventure games fits the style of play, so I am going to pursue this avenue further for the music generator.
While the PixelMaker is coming along well I need to make three pieces for assessment. I started mucking around in Impromptu looking for something to spark my interest. I played with Core Image filters and they are very cool! I am quite impressed by the tools OS X ships with!
Ok so obviously the Minx and I had fun with the webcam and the filters… hehe but it looks waaaay to Photoshop. However I do like CIShadedMaterial, and while it could look really tacky I thought by hue adjusting the orb and using the right shapes it could make some pretty cool looking droplets and so forth. Anyway, I’m stuck in Impromptu with the CIShadedMaterial, its the only filter I can’t get to work! I tried using it ages ago when I started using the filters with the webcam and still no luck. But I’ll persevere…
