Jayson Corey: The Pond

The concept for my project was to make a pond full of Lily Pads that drifted about in the water, and would be affected by wind generated by the person interacting with the product. I worked on this using Processing, and referenced past programs such as the animated rabbits and the noise based gnats to help me write the code as I produced it. The program itself runs smoothly with no existing errors.

The program generates 20 lily pads at random coordinates on random angles using one of three lily pad graphics I have designed at random. The lily pads move around with noise based movement patterns to give it a natural feel of lily pads in a pond, which works well with the pond background that I painted for the program. The program can be interacted with by using either the four directional keys to generate “Wind” that causes the lily pads to spin at variable speeds (Each input increases/decreases the total force by a set amount to input). The wind effects can reach a point where the speeds are nonsensical, so the program isn’t totally realistic, but it makes for fun and humorous effects.

The project itself was not overly challenging to create, though there was one technical issue that popped up during the creation process that drove me to a halt for a while. This problem came from the fact that lily pads won’t just slid on top of each other in a pond. I needed collision detection in programming terms. Processing, did not agree with my desires, especially thanks to transparent space in the image files which made it even harder for me to make this work. The program works, but I wish I could really get collision detection to work for it.

Enjoy the presentation!

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