#programmingforcreativity

I ran into a little problem when randomly generating the position of the two balls in assignment two:

The circle would sometimes form partly off-screen.

I thought this would be an easy fix by setting the parameters of the random function for the location, from the beginning of the canvas plus the radius of randomly generated circle to the end of the canvas minus its radius...

Unfortunately, it still phased off-screen...

AND HERE’S WHY!

 x = random (r, width-r);

 y = random (r, height-r); 

 r = random(10, 20); 

Even though I told the computer to offset by the radius, I did not realize that at that point the “r” did not exist/had not been generated yet. So I simply made the following changes:

r = random(10, 20);

x = random (r, width-r);

y = random (r, height-r);

Who knows if this will lead to a whole blog series or my laziness will render this to be an embarrassing standalone post but oh well... I deleted my games so I may as well post about it with all the free time I have (not much actually). I don’t know why I mentioned that or why I am still narrating my thought process but ANYWAYS!

Tonight, I have decided to finally tackle Assignment 2 for my programming class which requires me to simulate a certain number of balls (hopefully three) bouncing around a canvas. And so that when they collide with each other, they stick together and continue to bounce around in unison.

The epitome of contentment or perhaps postception...

I began by setting up the canvas, setting the ellipse mode to center cause why not and before I do anything else, I’m gonna teach myself how to do OOP (Object Oriented Programming I think??) and to use PVectors. 

Here is the video I am currently watching to accomplish the latter: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nTLzLf7jUg

Let’s see where this goes...

__________________________________________

PVector location;

location = new PVector (100, 50);

___________________________________________

Oh... wow. So here’s what I learnt:

PVector is a class that stores two variables (three but we shall not tread into the 3D realm yet): x and y

It’s used so you don’t have to keep on typing x and y all the time and also so that you know what the x and y are for (eg. the x and y components of velocity, location, etc)

The video contains code that does everything except collision detection... but I won’t abuse it cause learning is gud

Now that’s done, I shall attempt to replicate the code from scratch... right after I figure out how to make a class (hahaha siiiiigh I’m so far behind).

Important Stuff to Keep Note of While I Read That I’ll Forget After Reading:

Class: a description of the structure of an object

Instance: a specific example from a class 

After you define a class, you can use it as a new variable type

Okay reading sucks here’s a video(s) on Classes in Processing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmgcMPRa1qw (defining a class part I)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwfOVFelLoo (defining a class part II)

A lot of the info about defining a class has gone way over my head especially the constructor part of it so I’m going to play around with it in processing now.

An hour later...

HEY! So I kinda got it, I managed to create a class for balls and had their locations and radii successfully randomized upon generation.

And now I have managed to get them bouncing around the screen.

It is now time for me to go to bed as I have some random class at 9 am tomorrow to go to.

I barely caught Stefan before the end of class, he helped me to get the colour palette working in my programme. I still have a lot to go, but it’s now pretty fun to use.

Just making a Class to clean up all this code...

Day 5 (04-04-17)

Today, I got a wake-up call. We received our test results from last week, and to be honest, I did better than I thought, but worse that I should. I know the reason behind this grade though — I haven’t been spending as much time as I should on this subject, because I think other subjects are more important and time-consuming. So, I guess I really need to manage my time so that I can focus on this part of the course as well.

What I find difficult in this course is understanding how everything works. I am quite new to Programming and I think I’m trying my best to pay attention and trying to follow what I’ve been taught. However, by not putting in extra time or prioritising correctly, I’m letting myself down and basically failing this subject.

I still haven’t started the project for this course, however, after talking to Colin, I was feeling a bit better. I think I will use Max for this project as it can be a bit easier to use than PD. It also has many more tools and options, and allows more freedom to make the codes look attractive, which is one of the brief specifications.

For the rest of the week, I will go over all the slides and look at Max tutorials to help me get a better understanding of the Software. I believe if I practice during my free time, I will get a better grasp of both Softwares, and will easily be able to achieve this project. My goal is to at least start on this project by Friday, so that I have next week to improve, make changes and receive any help or feedback from Colin.

Programming For Creativity

Day 1 (07-03-17)

Today, we had our first session of Programming For Creativity. Overall, it was a pretty good  lecture. However, I have never learnt programming before, so I was a bit confused with the language. Firstly, we learned about the coding of the first piano. It was really good to listen to the way that the piano was playing and I soon realised that it was due to the coding. No human could have played that piece of music as it was quite fast and needed lots of keys to be played at once.

Then, we downloaded the Software required for programming — “PureData.”

Since I am new to this Software, I asked for some help from the people around me. It got easier after a while and I was able to produce the three different sounds taught to us.

(see the video above - the sound isn’t clear but if you listen closely, you can hear the three different tunes.)

This is quite a fun Software to play around with and try different coding, however, I will look at different tutorials to learn more and be ready for the next lesson.

Programming for Creativity //First Assignment// Summative %5