For the final project of this class, I’m going to collaborate with Min Jun Kim. We are thinking about doing a simple video game which draws inspiration from Gradius. We are planning to make three different stages of the game: first two are competing against small enemies and the last stage will be against the boss, a black hole. We use be using objects and interactive background and sound. The game will be set in a carefully designed galaxy theme that varies with each stage. There will be multiple different characters to choose from and about 10 kinds of enemy ships.
A simple draft of the first two stages of our game.
A simple draft of the first two stages of our game.
I am using my first grace day for this post.
For this semester’s project proposal, I’ve decided to work together with Han Yu from the same class on a simple generative video game. We decided to work on a spaceship game inspired by Gradius, where numerous spaceship enemies appear to attack the main protagonist. For our version of this project, we are going to be incorporating three rounds of fighting. The first two will have various enemies that appear in random but also planned times, and the last round will consist of a boss character which will be a black hole. In the last round, the character will constantly be gravitationally pulled toward the enemy while being attacked by missiles and laser shots. The stages will be determined by how many enemy spaceships the user destroys, and the boss will have a health-bar to show how far the user is from winning the game. In the end, the user’s spaceship will do a simple celebratory dance, and a caption that says, “You saved the Universe!” I think that this project will be difficult in that there will be at least 4 objects used- Stage1 Enemies, Stage2 Enemies, and Boss, and projectiles. I think figuring out the logistics of dealing damage will be the most difficult part of this project.
We are using one of the grace days on this assignment.
Our final project proposal is making a program that simulates a piano, like the apps available on iPhones. When keys are pressed, sound comes out, and maybe a note floats up to the top out of the key. The size of the notes or movement could be based on how long the key is pressed for or something. Creating the visual of pressing down the key and making the piano look realistic will be challenging, and making the sounds realistic and reactive will also be something we have to figure out. We have not really done much with sound in this class, so working more with sound will be challenging. Below are some sketches of what we plan to try and make visually. The basic program to make it work seems to be something realistic to try and work towards, but making it visually more appealing is something we want to work on more.
what the interface might look like
I will be working with Sharon Yang (also in Section C) on this project.
For my final project I would like to make some sort of interactive art using the camera and possibly emotion recognition. I thought that the camera assignment was really interesting and totally rewarding as it was so different from the previous assignments. I was thinking that it may be interesting to make some interactive art when the person in the camera is smiling or frowning or making a face that is clearly some type of emotion. For example, really colorful fireworks when the person in the frame is smiling or raindrops when the person is frowning. I believe that I could make some really interesting forms that generate based off of the expression that a person has on their face and that it will be interesting to explore human emotion further with code. Some resources on this campus that may be able to help me with this may be a teacher at the School of Art, Angela Washko, who has a lot of experience in New Media art and may possibly be a good resource for researching this further.
below is a small sketch to demonstrate, apologies for the poor drawing skills!
I’m thinking about creating an interactive visual program with sound effects. The project will have simple geometries falling from the top of the screen. The big black letters in my name are arranged randomly on the screen. The direction of the movement of the geometries is determined by the movement of the mouse. The geometries can bounce off, spin, or be contained by the letters. Music will respond to the bouncing of the geometries. When the users click on the geometries, they will enter different visuals, music, and mood according to the color of the geometries. For example, red will be passionate, blue will be calm and peaceful, and yellow will be lively. I’m interested in the interactive visuals and combining them with music in a harmonious way. I hope to practice my skills on working with sounds and visual effects since I did not work much with sounds during the class.
For my final project, I intend to make a game utilizing the turtle code as my base for player characters. The game will be based on Snake, with changes that could include things such as maps, power ups, and passive enemies. I intend to include a multiplayer mode in which the players can compete in rounds to last the longest. Running into anyone’s trail will cause the player who does so to lose. Including a set of playable characters with different strengths and weaknesses is also a priority.
I am still considering some other interesting possibilities for the game, like having multiple control schemes (mouse, keyboard, controller if possible), or a continuous run mode in which the game functions with the players constantly moving in one direction having to avoid different obstacles as well as each other. This mode could increase in difficulty as the game progresses, allowing players to compete to beat their own top scores.
For the final project, I am interested in data visualization. More specifically, I want to represent the data of Pittsburgh’s rainfall record using what I learned from 104. The goal of this project is to allow people to “see” how much rainwater Pittsburgh gets for the past year. And what we can possibly do with the rainwater if we collected fifty percent or thirty-five percent of it. The project should also be visually attractive and easy to understand. So the audience will be interested and comprehending the message that the project tries to relate.
I am not sure how this project will look like yet.
For my project proposal, I am really interested in making an interactive game. I was really inspired by one of the projects I covered in my looking outwards for this week, which was a retake on the popular game Flappy Bird. It combines the use of the generative landscape and simple animation of an object on the screen. The object would bounce up and down dependent on a mouse click or a keypress.
I’m still not 100% sure what the theme of my game will be, but one idea that I had in mind was using another character that could fly, such as a different type of bird or even a fictional character like a dragon or unicorn. For example, if a dragon were used, a generative background of something similar to a cave could be used. While starting to code this project, I would start with something that was simple like a circle, in order to make sure the code works.
The flappy object should match the theme of the generative landscape
For this final project I wanted to do something with Studio Ghibli and their music. So I decided to have a rhythm game where if you press a certain key then a character from one of the Ghibli films will pop up. If you press two keys as the same time and have matching characters then the music of the movie will start to play until you find another matching pair. The characters will just be bouncing up and down when they appear on the screen and I might add some actions to them. I will limit the keys from A-L and Space which will mean there will be 10 characters total and 5 pairs. Also, along with the music being played the title of the movie or film will pop up on the screen. This game will have a plain background until there is a match where I will load in a picture background/ scene from the movie.
For our final project, Jason and I want to create an audiovisual performance instrument. Inspired by the dynamic capabilities of static design, a concept honed by historic Swiss Design, our project will utilize the alternation of simple geometric shapes to visualize the kinetic nature of music. Source audio will be represented by a singular circle surrounded by a sea of triangles and quadrilaterals. The scale of the center circle and the form of outside shapes will change according to beat and frequency changes in the music. This visual display will suggest an interplay between the source audio and its environment. The concept is similar to ripples created by a droplet of water. This project will explore the communicative capabilities of flat imagery to convey movement and test our own abilities to break down music in a communicative format. Below is an example of how the visuals of this project will look.
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