DSDN 142: A Growing Tree!

V = Victory!

if  (code looks like this){
V = true
}

Yay! Success has been achieved in the solar linkage to the plant! I now have a plant that grows due to the existence of suns on the canvas. This is really cool, because it's exactly what my interaction is about. Having been able to get the suns into my main code, this then allowed me to link the growth of the plant to the duration of the suns existence.

Another element I was able to shape to my will was the Sundrive code. That code forced the tree to grow upwards, but I reshaped it to grow in the direction of the existant suns. I also incorporated a random element into it so it's not entirely clear that the tree is gravitating to the suns, so that the user feels like they have an element of control, but they in no way really control how something can grow naturally.

This sense of the natural creation process being something not entirely controllable means that the user will feel also an odd sense of disconnect with the plant, and realise that this is the way nature works. Plants grow towards what they need, but at the same time there is an inherent sense of randomness to their patterns.

The main problem that I still have at the moment is that the background needs to refresh for the suns to disappear again and actually look the way that they should, but if I refresh the background, the tree disappears. I don't want that. So that'll be something to figure my way around.

The battle with the code rages on, so having a small victory like this is important to me. The tree is lookng good, but the next thing I had to do was get some colour into it. Compared to the rest of this, this is the easiest thing I've had to do in a very long time.

Now that there is colour in the tree, I need to make it look more like a tree by linking a colour change to the aging of the tree. I want the trunk to go browner as the tree reaches maturity. Not the easiest thing in the world, but not the hardest either!

DSDN 112: Storyboarding The Future!

After coming up with my story, I had to storyboard it. I also experimented in this not only with how the story would progress, but how I wanted the camera shots to be as well. I've tried to consider the composition of my shots as well. The narrative I'm going for in this is explained on the previous post.

And yes, I know I'm not a great sketcher. That's why I want to Design School and not Art School. They're more forgiving there.

DSDN 142: Transitioning The Code

Slowly I'm starting to integrate my two pieces of code together; melding them so to speak. It's not the easiest thing in the world, and in particular getting the actual tree to work in the stage I've set up is proving to be a mission.

However, that said, that which I do have is very pretty. The interaction itself at present is merely clicking and having a tree grow in stages, which isn't really much of an interaction at all. I also definitely want to nail down the actual aesthetic of the tree, and put some leaves/flowers on it. It's a little bare at the moment.

I've still got to come up with the design for the leaves and flowers!

DSDN 142: Altering & Shaping Stolen Goods!

To my eternal amusement, I've managed to use my wits and endless (yeah right) charm to reshape this code to do my bidding (for now). Altering code that isn't your own can be really tricky, because often other people have a totally different "style" of writing their code. For example, it aggravates me when people don't leave spaces between calculations. Despite the fact that it saves space, I find it makes things harder to read and structure.

I managed to re-write the code so that now only one tree grows, in the background format that I want, and the tree progresses in growth based on mouse clicks, rather than the whole tree growing instantly based on one mouse press.

In theory, this should allow me to connect the growth element to the presence of suns beyond a certain size, encouraging the tree to grow based on that. It should be relatively simple, but with coding you can never tell.  I'm still slowly working towards a stage of ultimate synergy with Processing, but I predict that with the current amount of time spent on learning it, that could be a few years out.

Having the single tree also grow from the point that I have decided is the top of the hill is also really useful, because in theory then I should just be able to copy this code over, and with some small alterations, apply it to my solar creation code with the awesome setting that I have.

The only concern that I have so far is that this code here that I've re-written is due to the background refreshing itself in my solar creation code, while in this code, the background doesn't refresh. I can see this causing some issues, and at present I'm really not sure how to rectify it.