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Creative coding Term 2

Week 1

In week one we jumped straight into the new area of creative coding, the next level we would reach was introduced as a piece of software called Processing.

Processing is a software that allows you to draw in pixels either 2D or in 3D, creating near enough any Image that comes to mind.

We just had a brief introduction into the software where we learnt a technique called pointillism, this is when you move your mouse other pixels will react to it causing the image to change based on; the speed of the mouse, The curve of the mouse and the positioning of the mouse, all of the factors add up to create a rather aesthetic piece of art work.

Week 2

This week we were introduced into the feature of drawing in processing, I only created generic pixel art but the possibility’s are endless in the aspect of crating an image.

stroke(0); fill(255, 0, 0); rect(50, 50, 160, 200)  This small line of code tell the software, where to place the pixel on the grid, along with what colour to show.

The process is simple in creating pixel art, for myself I created the furthest points of the image from top to bottom and left to right to map out my character, then proceeded to outline the rest, once the outlining was complete I moved into the centre to create the variants of colours.

Here is an example of the Image I made, through processing 

Obviously I copied the image, but as a fan of the Zelda games, Link seemed like a cool character to make, in the test of my processing skills.

From week 2 up until week 4 we learnt the basics in image manipulation, from resizing a distorting images, using pointillism.

Week 5

We were told to assign our self's into groups  for our final performance, in this group we would sit down and discuss what sort of performance we would like to produce.

Ed, Maris and I all chose to work together, we instantly decided on creating an interactive game that allowed users to create a unique piece of music depending on the style of play coming from the player.

So we thought working along the lines of an endless runner would be the best.

The reason for this being, is that we chose to have a song running in the back ground through sonic pi. The initial idea was to create something along the lines of tron, using luminescent green/blue colours to create the aesthetics.

 One of the idea was to create a similar level from saints row 3, that also use tron themed styles.

These images helped a lot with the design on the map, as it was a oval shape that kept you on a single path, but allowed you to use the whole track.

The image above is the uv map for our first track design.

This was not as pleasing to the eye as originally thought, as the track relayed over at such a pace if we added details into the centre they would only blur, and there was no way that we found in slowing the track down with out damaging the rest of the game.

The original idea was to have three levels (one for each team member) and in this level the music would change to the intensity of the level.

This idea was quickly scrapped as we thought we could produce one level that was constructed to a higher standard rather then three averagely done ones.

The original game was to consist of simple geometry; A cube, pyramid and a sphere. These ideas help up until the final few weeks where we chose to use a space ship, and more complex geometry. 

This is of the new ship with a particle trail behind as seen in the intro of the game.

This is to display how the map works, as you can see it is a semi circle/ oval shape, that dose not restrict movement but if you fall off the map you will have to restart.

The image is not very clear, but you can just about see the simple geometric shapes of the old design, there is a cube next to the space ship and a spear off in the distance.

as you can see we have edited the ships design, to make a more sleek agile feeling when playing.

We have also added in rings that travel at consistent speed, to create a more immersive feeling.

this is the coding behind the rings, it almost replicas the codes of the object base/ item base but unlike these the rings cannot be collided with.

This is how the final product came out, as you can see we have added an alpha channel onto the map so that you get the feeling of flying through space.

The geometry we have used has become more advanced as the shapes have become more complex, as we felt using simple shapes would take away the feeling of immersion.

We originally were going to create a track that was not see through, and it was going to have a luminescent pipe running through the centre, although this would have been a nice idea, it was hard to create a pipe that didn’t interact with the spaceship as it was flying, on the other hand it was difficult to create a realistic texture map that was flat but still looked nice to eye.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WLn2MOIabc&feature=youtu.be

In the video above, you can see how the track along with the ship has progressed, there is one major issue we encountered, that was to do with the turning, as the ship turns one way we needed it to rotate the other, to mimic the motions of flight. We managed to create the rotation on one side yet not the other. 

The highlighted selection of the codes represent how the ship is meant to turn and rotate from left to right. The code at first glance looks as if it should work, yet there is somethings persistently wrong with how it acts, the code represents the rotation combined with directional movement, this is meant to show when the ship translates right the ship should rotate on the z axis to left giving the illusion of flight, yet as we have not yet discovered how to treat the issue we are stuck with using only a right rotation when turning left. This for me is taking away the aesthetics of the game yet as we cannot figure out where the exact issue is coming from, we had to make do with what we had for the performance, we cam to the conclusion if we had more time we would have been able to fix this, as it was a matter of trail and error.

Aside from set back of the character movements I feel that we have been very successful in creating a  sci-fi short endless runner, as we used simple colours and shapes that were not to taxing on the CPU when played, this created a easy style of game play that was nice to look at and did not require a complex system play on, this is a huge advantage as some people said, ‘we should try to create a mobile app based our works’, this is possible to do so, if the errors and bugs are fixed. So overall, the course this year in creative has been a very useful to me, as I thought I was going to have to spend hours of my own times learning to code in C#. I personally feel that I we could have started to use unity from day one as the codes are very simple for the basics. But over all I have enjoyed this course and learned a lot of valuable skills.

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Creative Coding Term 1

This week we started our first lesson in creative coding, by doing so we were introduced into the brief history of coding panning from early cave drawings up to sending rockets into space.

code is essentially a language that can be used in many forms, but the most formidable and recognisable form that comes to mind when thought of code is that of concealing sensitive information or the functions of a computer and its programs.

example I have just opened the control panel for the webpage I am on and it has displayed a series of codes that command what the websites attributes are. If were to understand correctly what these mean I can essentially change the functions and appearance of what I do and see, this is just one aspect of coding.

Week 1

We were introduced to the idea that we are going to be using code to display creativity, at first I was very sceptical of this as I have only known code as a form of communication of either between human to human or human to machine in means of secrecy and conveyance of information.

But firstly we had a brief overview on the history of coding and the relevance of code in everyday society.

We explored all forms of coding dating back thousands of years up to present day, it became apparent that I had no idea of how much coding is integrated into our day to day lives.

Firstly we looked at early forms of coding up to modern day standards.

Drawings

Smoke signals

fire/coastal beacons

Noises, more precisely drum beats  

Flags/ lights

Navigation systems; flags lights, horns bells

Traffic light systems

Vehicle lights; indicators, break lights, fog lights, hazard lights

Dewey Decimal System and Braille

The telegraph - Morse

Code as Encryption

Computer Code/Binary

Bar and QR Codes.

We then went onto to look at how a lamp processes the information that relays from switch to bulb to create light.

This is a simple flow chart that explains what steps to take when your lamp dose not work.

This is  a very nice example of how coding works, as code is essentially just a set of instructions that have to be followed to produce the desired outcome  

This simple step by step can be applied to almost any situation that confronts us in our lives, all that needs changing is the scenario.

This diagram shows how a computer processes the information we feed to it,

for example as I am typing the computer is calculating what I am trying to convey, and if I make a mistake my word will be highlighted, and I will be given a drop down of the most likely outcome I was trying to achieve.  

This is based on what letters a word consists of and how many letters there are, from this the computer can predict what I am trying to write and discontinue other variables that might not be relevant thus following the simple step by step diagram shown above.

We were asked to assign ourselves into groups of two or more, and try to produce a simple step by step process to command another group to walk though a set of doors and complete numerous tasks.

This went horribly wrong as imagined.

But it did give me another perspective on what I had just learned as I was able to see what the practical side of the algorithm might be, (pretending I was a computer).

Week 2

Part 1

In this week we learnt about how coding has evolved through the means of warfare.

It is quite apparent that all forms of technological advancements that progressed over the years have unfortunately seen radical progression as a direct result of conflict, be it medical or machinery or both.

But the aspect of progression that is undeniable is how code has evolved, when there has been war there has been tactics be as primitive as throwing a punch or as mastery as taking over a country with minimal casualty’s, each party has needed communication between one another.

These methods of communication have to be able to evolve so that one party can communicate in secrecy with out the opposition being knowledgeable, a prime example is the native American Indians using smoke signals that were unique to each tribe. 

To the use of Morse code that is a universal language but had its own adaptions to the party, so that messages could be sent in long distance without interception.

But it was in wwII that the most technological advancement in coding was, the Nazi born Enigma machine that made it possible for the Nazi’s to communicate in secrecy by means of having millions of possible codes.

To the outside eye it was a bunch of number that made no apparent sense, but the Nazi’s were given a subject that the code would relate to each day, so they were able to receive the correct information.

Although the Enigma machine was undoubtedly the marvel of the century, it was soon to be outdone by a man named Allen Turing.

He was to invent a machine that manged millions of lines of code a minute, which was able to take on the Enigma by means of brute force accompanied by brains. The creation of Allen Turing’s Turning machine effectively shortened the war by 5 years and is said to have possibly even won the war.

But what none of these amazing mathematicians and inventors did not take into account is that fact that where ever there is new technology, there is creativity, and it did not take long for the creative types to adopt coding as a form of art.

Here are some prime examples   

Cybernetic Serendipity

 http://cyberneticserendipity.net/

Yoko Ono ‘Cloud Piece’, 1963

http://imaginepeace.com/tag/cloud-piece-1963

Software - Information Technology: Its New Meaning for Art

https://monoskop.org/Software_(exhibition)

FLUXUS, 1959-1978

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Brecht

Part 2

We then looked at how our imaginations could interpret another persons image and create a completely different outlook.

so we looked at works from John Cage who conducted an experiment in 1959, known as Water Walk; this consisted of John Cage climbing a ladder and pouring water into a bucket.

What is fantasising about this is that the audience is to imagine their own ladder, bucket and water noises, and without surprise everyone's interpretation is different be it slightly or on great magnitude.

So now for our final part of understanding interpretation in code we would work in pairs and construct a music sheet, but instead of notes we were to use the objects seen around as percussion instruments.

once our composition was complete we would hand our task sheets to another group for them to perform it, this is where it gets interesting as the performers where acting on our guidelines but had a totally different idea of how it should sound i.e the speed and how hard the objects where to be used.

The task went very well as the group we gave it to kept to the guidelines but how the performed it sounded totally different to how it was performed by myself.

We could have made the code much stricter but that would have made the task slightly less enjoyable.

week 3  

The overview of this weeks lesson;

We started to use sonic pi where we did a couple of walk through tutorials.

We learnt how the user interface works and how precise you have to be with coding, as one small mistake and the whole code would not play.

Week 4 

Week four was a re-cap on what we have been learning in sonic pi over the term.

Firstly we spoke about the user interface and the different uses along with the commands.

We started with the basic usage of the software and these are the buttons. 

the buttons consist of; run, stop, record, save, load.

These are all essential for using sonic pi, they effectively make the software usable.

After the re-cap on the previous lessons we were asked to perform our one minute compositions, that we had been working one over the past two weeks. 

I was very nervous at first as I had previous experience in the software.

But it was not very bad at all as every other person was in the same position as I was. 

My performance was based on electronic house music, as I proffered to create something that sounded lively and also sounded reasonably good, compared to just having a few notes playing.

Week 5

Week 5 consisted of preparing our codes for the final performance and exploring more areas of sonic pi.

Week 6

Week six consisted of; recapping over previous lessons, continuation with the construction of our compositions, and finally just over all practice that would deem to be very useful in the long run.  

Week 7

Origins of Computer Culture:

We learnt about the history of computer culture and how it has evolved through war, and then always a step behind war is creatives using the technology’s different potentials.

After the Seminar and the reading list hand out, we continued to practice our compositions.

Week 8

Lesson 8 has just been a re cap on the general aspects of sonic pi, basically looking over the main things to rein-bed the information.

 Week 9

From week nine onward’s we basically have just been practising live coding and creating additions to our compositions.