Snakes Final

My final updated version of my snake interaction. I have updated the sound, snakes now have an age limit, the colour choices have been updated and a better method for redisplaying the background.

The sound is based on where the snakes are on the Y axis, the pitch gets higher the further to the bottom the snakes are and lower the closer to the top the snakes are. The sound is made by manipulating the sine wave, which I think suits the visuals, the sin wave has a retro gaming beeping quality to it. The volume/gain is based on how many squares are covered by a snake square, the more snakes which aren't overlaping the louder the noise.

The snakes disappear once they have been on the screen for a certain amount of time, this allows for more user interaction and for the user to keep on interacting with the application.

I changed the colours, I have still kept the random portion of the colour choices. Again I think that it makes the application more visually appealing and interesting when you have a large number of snakes all different colours chasing the mouse around the screen.

http://www.openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=27908

Research into snake game

I did a bit of research into the snake game and the noises that are made in some of the original versions of the game. Most of them tended to only have a sound when you ate and grew a bit longer, i'm not interested in recreating the game. It's just that my concept ended up resembling it so I think that I should use similar sounds to the original game so that the visuals match what people think it should sound like.

There's a large collection of links to different Snake games at the bottom of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_%28video_game%29

Beat creator II

I have made a better version of my beat creator, this one only plays a sound just as the circle 'pops', using the mute() and unmute() methods of the AudioOutput.

 http://www.openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=27763

Interactive Snakes

I have managed to quite successfully recreate my concept idea of having snakes follow your cursor around the screen. My only problem at the moment is working out how to successfully intergrate sound into this interaction.

The interaction itself I am very pleased with and utitlises the points that I really liked about the Gravity swarm sketh that I found in my investigation:

"The thing I like about this interaction is that you influence it, but not directly. You aren't sure exactly what will happen, which makes it more interesting and makes the user experiment to see what they can do. Which is something I would like to achieve, the partical system does quite well."

What I have eneded up creating is a modified particle system of sorts, while a normal particle system has velocity, gravity and a lot more calculations my interpretation is a much simpler one which is based on the relative position to the mouse. But still manages to create an equally interesting interaction.

I know that using random() to choose the colours is frowned upon by some of the tutors, but in this case I think that it actually works. I have slightly ensured that the colours created aren't completly random. But the random colours make it much more interesting when you have lots of snakes on the screen, so in this case I think that it actually works. 

My problem however is implementing sound in a way that it works ellegantly. Most trials that I have had have sounded awful, especially when you have lots of snakes on screen. I have tried making invisble grid lines which when a snake crosses over these, depending on their position makes a noise. This works quite well for when there's a few snakes on the screen, but when this number gets large it gets unmanageable for the speakers, the sound is awful and it makes the program lag.

Also I have tried making certain squares make noises only, but that made it confusing what was actually causing the noises.

So I am not sure if it should be making noise as they are all racing across the screen or they are al crowded around the mouse. So I have some design desiscions to make. But the version I uploaded is what I am presenting at the interim presentation so hopefully I wil be able to get some useful feedback.

Beat creator

I managed to create my concept in processing, I used this for experimentation using sound. Which was a good way to learn about using the minim and the sound wave. While it doesn't sound or look particularly nice, I have learnt quite a lot about using and implementing sounds. I also think that the sin wave would make sounds that would suit my idea of the retro snake concept.

I can't quite figure out how to make the noise happen only as the circle 'pops', rather than when it pops it changes the sine wave that is currently being heard.

Link to open processing: http://www.openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=27761

Interim presentation feedback

At the interim presentation the feedback I recieved was most positive towards the snake idea because while there is an interaction between the user and the program, it won't be a binary interaction when you know exactly will happen when you do an action. Instead the computer has some input which causes it to differ slightly each time the program is run.

I thought however that I might still try and create the ripple beat idea as an easy way to test out using sound inside of Processing.

My interim concepts

These are the concepts that I presented at the interim presentation:

1. Lotto balls, the idea of this concept was that the user would click and hold down the mouse, which would create a lotto ball with the size depending on how the long the user held down the mouse. The lotto balls would then roll around inside of a larger circle which is effectively the wheel, when the balls collided and rolled off of the group it would make a noise. I think that this could like quite nice, however I don't think that the user interaction is very strong or interesting. Plus it's might not be that obvious as to what is making the noise.
2. Ripple beat, this concept works when the user clicks and holds down the mouse it spawns an elipse, this elipse keeps on growing the longer the mouse is held down for. When the mouse is released again the elipse starts again and keeps on regrowing when it reaches it's maximum size. When it gets to it's max it creates a noise, this noise changes depending on where the origin of the elipse is, with the noise getting higher pitched the closer to the top the elipse is located and the closer to the left it is then the more the noise comes out of that speaker, the same with the right. I think that this could be quite an interesting idea and you might be able to make some quite complex tunes using it.
3. Snake, you click to spawn a snake and the snakes are attracted to your mouse so as you move the mouse around they follow you. The sound would be as the snakes cross invisble grid lines it would make a noise. The visuals would be loosely based on the retro game of snake. This idea actaully came from one of my wallpaper concepts though.
4. Coil/tentacle, this idea would have the user click again to create a tentacle coily thing, which is made up of a long line of elipses which would coil clockwise and anticlockwise, randomly changing as they go and progressively get smaller. I think that this could create some interesting patterns, the noise would be based on when they cross over one another. I also have another idea but I'm not sure how easy it would be to implement, but that once a tentacle is created, when the mouse passes over the tentacle it pulls and attracts it slightly, affecting the whole thing which would add more interactivity.