Author: Lexloug

Dr. Mario – Creature

 

 

This is my curious but cautious bug, “Lord Scuttles the third of Celastria”.  This little guy is very curious about the red dot you’re dragging across the screen, similar to a cat trying to catch a laser pointer. However, due to his parents overprotective nature while raising him as a prince, he is very fearful of anything unknown that comes towards him causing him to run away shaking. To us he may seem like a simple pet, but back in Celastria he is a big name in the royal family and has appeared in the people’s favourite prince magazine every year since his success in developing a truce between the their kingdom and the honey badgers that frequently torment them, establishing mutual protection and sharing of resources.

I really liked how my project turned out, a very simple idea but it has a lot of personality to it. I tried adding microphone inputs where the sound would increase the range at which Lord Scuttles stays away from the mouse, but no matter what I tried my browser never wanted to pick up an input from my mic. Originally, the bug would just move towards the  mouse and run away from it if you came towards it, but I thought it didn’t have any emotions to it, so I added changing colour and shaking to make it seem like he was traumatised by the approach of your mouse. Overall, I’m a fan of Lord Scuttles the third of Celastria, I think he came out great.

 

 

 

Dr. Mario – landscape

https://openprocessing.org/sketch/1481951

This is my landscape generator, it creates a basic landscape with several layers with different colours to distinguish the contour lines of the world. It is then populated with trees and villages to bring signs of life.

If I had more time (and was allowed to use unity), I would take what I learnt in this project to make 3D landscapes with auto generating terrain and villages similar to minecraft as I think the way I approached this project would allow easy transition to 3D by adding a simple height map based on the perlin noise. I wanted to add a camera movement system, but I found out that I would have had to overhaul my project and make it 3D and I didn’t have time for that. This project was really fun, enjoyed making some basic pixel art again.

 

DrMario – Reading03

Question 1A:

Something that exhibits effective complexity is the procedural Minecraft landscape, I’d say its on the left hand side of the graph shown on page 13. It’s quite random but at the same time there are rules that it must follow so you can almost guess what it will somewhat look like.

 

Question 1B: I have a conflict with the problem of intent. I understand that making a computer do the work for you instead of specifically hand crafting it to be your perfect piece draws away the intent of the piece, but in some cases, like in Dead Cells, the computer generated landscape adds to the piece and the re-playability of the game which goes great with the Roguelike Genre. I think that generative art can have just as much intent as normal art as long as it fits in with the genre and ideas behind the piece.

 

Dr. Mario – Timepiece

This is my project time keeper: https://openprocessing.org/sketch/1470380

This is a base defence game called Time Keeper, your goal is to fend off asteroids hurling towards your planet that has a one minute orbit, with a self defence moon with an orbit of one second. The asteroids are also spawned on a one second timer. There is also a reminder at the top of the play space that changes every 15 minutes telling you what you could be doing instead of playing the game.

I think the biggest issue with my piece was that I was revolving too much around making a game and not enough on getting it to be an actual time piece. There isn’t much to show people that it’s time based and I tried to change that in the most recent changes but I still feel like I messed up on that part and I will keep it in mind for future projects that the theme comes first and my ego comes second.

 

Dr. Mario – Time Research

My favourite one of these readings/viewing was the video of the entire history of timekeeping in 6 minutes. It was short and sweet, and I think the part that stuck with me the most was the fact that people were trying so hard to figure out a way to track longitude and it took many many years to come up with what today we would think of something so simple, a wind up clock.

Dr. Mario – Loop Research

 

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A post shared by Dave Whyte (@davebeesbombs)

I was immediately drawn to the changing colours and the spinning, but what I really liked the most was the effect on the hexagons as they transition, they have a really cool shutter effect going on.

 

Skateboarding sandwich.

https://andreaswannerstedt.se/google-ces-diorama

Google CES Diorama from Andreas Wannerstedt on Vimeo.

This one is incredible. Its kind of a loop with the train, but I really like the idea of this lo-poly city. What is even cooler is that they 3D printed it all so that it is now a physical sculpture which I think is amazing.

Dr. Mario – Looking Outwards01

Amazon.com: Garfield Kart - Nintendo 3DS : Video Games

For my looking outwards topic, I chose Garfield Kart.

Garfield Kart is a living master piece, appearing on many different platforms it can seen as one the greatest pieces of interactive media known to mankind.

I’ve spent over 150 hours playing Garfield kart and I have yet to scratch the surface of the complexity of the mechanics and lore in the GCU.

My favourite installment of Garfield Kart has to be Garfield Kart: Furious Racing, I feel like the sequel brought the game to a whole new level with new interesting mechanics while refreshing the old and outdated ones.

 

10/10 can’t have lasagna cause I’m lactose intolerant.

Dr. Mario – Loop

For my Rhythm Loop I re-made a classic optical illusion that makes it seem like the balls on the inside are moving in a circle when they are actually all moving in straight lines. I tried to find a zen-like colour scheme to go with it as I thought it was quite peaceful.

I feel like I succeed quite well in making an infinite loop but I feel like I could have made it more complex like some of my other ideas.  I feel like this could go quite well as a background with some lofi music to back it, but I’m not sure how I would get music to work in p5js or how to make it loop unless I make it myself.

The gif is way faster than the original so click on it to see how fast it actually goes.