Project 3

I set out at the beginning of this project to make a marble run that iterates one marble at a time as a for loop does. In the beginning I thought this would be easy enough to accomplish and then I could spend loads of time making it beautiful, testing it and putting cool loops and jumps in it. NOT the case!

Lets look at my process to understand.

 

This (above) is the first idea I had and made a miniature model for the interim-presentation.  

So I decided to make a prototype and spent around 13hrs straight fighting with this wire contraption. It worked in a way and was really fun to play with but for the life of me, I could not get the loop function to work. After all that work I had to scrap the idea and decided to work on a vertical board, so that interchanging parts during my development would  be alot easier.

This is the beginning of my "cartridge" idea. The marbles are placed in the cartridge at the top left of the screen and as one reaches the bottom it triggers the next marble to be punched out, just like a gun. The next four images are of just a few of the loads of ways I tried to make this work. Next idea.

I then tried to rework my first idea, which didn't work.

And then finally made my final. This is a video of my model running well, me testing it with my flatmate and then us knocking it off the counter and smashing it. 3hrs later I finish my model but it just wasn't the same.

Project 3 Interim

I have decided to explain the loop. My metephor I've chosen to explain the loop is a marble track. I'm planning to make an interactive model, whereby you choose how many times you want the loop to run by putting x number of marbles at the top of the track. Then when you run the application it will send one marble down through a series of "functions", like spirals and jumps. When the first marble gets to the bottom it triggers the next marble to start the track and so on.

I think this is a perfect  way to explain a loop to a layman. It is a function where you define the number of iterations and each time it runs throught it excecutes the same application. A loop!

Transformation

This project was an involved transformation on so many levels for me. As I said in my interim presentation, my design has evolved into something completely different from my original idea. I believe it's evolution in the started from my excessive exploration and "playing".

I decided to layer ideas, starting off by giving my self a goal I had to achieve and once accomplished I'd push myself more and more. Thus building and learning everything I needed to know, first with little  tests and then applying them to my design.

Half way through this project my sketch was so crazy and involved it was beginning to becoming to chaotic to function. I then began a programming process in never normally indulge in, editing.



I opened up a brand new window and began completely re typing the over 400 lines of code I had spent weeks on. Quite daunting. But thankfully I began to find awesome new ways to code functions that, not only saved me loads of  code and gave my way better fuctionality, but birthed this beautiful simplicity in my design that gave me the opportunity to attack the brief more directly.

A big part of my learning curve with this project was making sounds with code, I made 4/5 test  sketches to make sure I understood sound in processing. This helped me make my final project.

The main idea behind the final is that the user will begin playing with a really smooth and refined peice of code that makes a happily bouncing ball follow the mouse drawing a line wherever in when. Then the idea is that by the time the user begins to play and starts drawing little interesting shapes, their experience is transformed and they are surprised by the fact that the line shapes transform themselves into shapes.

The user should find that the sound is determined by where the ball has bounced previously and where it will bounce. Where the ball has bounced vertically gives the sound its pitch and horizontally gives its its stereo effect. Then the quicker the ball is currently bouncing changes the speed the sound will change.

This is all visualized by the circle that seams to be playing the sound as the tail passes through it. I chose to simplify the visual  aspect so that I wouldn't take away from the simply entertainment that the sketch gave me.

All in all this project has been an awesome learning experience and i am defiantly feeling a lot more confident with my programming and designing skills.