Daily Archives: 31 Mar 2013

Patt

31 Mar 2013

As a mechanical engineer, I really really want to work with hardware for this final project. I really want to get my hands dirty and machine something. Now that I am a little more familiar with Max/MSP, I am excited to use it for my final project. As someone who loves to explore new places, I was amazed to recently find out that my friend has never been to a lot of places in Pittsburgh even though he’s about to graduate in less than two months. It has never occurred to me that a good number of CMU students live in ‘CMU’ but not in ‘Pittsburgh’. I think Pittsburgh has a lot of potential, definitely a perfect city for college students. I have grown to love this city more and more every year, and I want people to feel the same way.

For this final project, I want to make something that maps the different places you go to in this city. I am thinking about making a wall map or a box, carved out a ‘map’ of Pittsburgh (does not have to be the exact map of the city, but shows different places like restaurants/museums/tourist attractions), and install LED lights. A GPS will track a place you have been, and lights will go off at that specific place.

The layout and the details of the map might change, but this is just a general idea of what I want to do. Here are some projects that will help me get started.

http://www.creativeapplications.net/arduino-2/no-place-like-home-a-pair-of-shoes-that-will-always-guide-you-home/

http://goodnightlamp.com/

http://www.creativeapplications.net/maxmsp/skube-tangible-interface-to-last-fm-spotify-radio/

http://www.etsy.com/listing/105605355/pittsburgh-pennsylvania-city-map-art?ref=sr_gallery_35&ga_search_query=cartography&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_ship_to=US&ga_search_type=all

http://www.designsponge.com/2010/09/pittsburgh-city-guide.html

 

Kyna

31 Mar 2013

Solar2 –

This game was recommended to us by Nathan during our critique. It’s a very interesting game with a really unique mechanic. You play as an asteroid that gains mass over time, although no specific instructions are ever given to you. The idea of learning through playing and acting really appeals to me and I hope that it’s something we can pull off in Small Bones. While our game will certainly not be as elegant as Solar2, I hope that we can emulate the same learning techniques that it employs so well.

LIMBO –

Along the same vein of instructionless games, LIMBO is a very unique puzzle game with simple mechanics used in interesting ways. The game only allows for movement and an all-purpose interaction button. Done entirely in monochrome silhouettes, LIMBO is a very dark game that does a very good job of making you feel alone. While I don’t necessarily want Small Bones to reflect the same darkness that LIMBO does, I’d very much like to emulate its wordless teaching and ingenious use of a simple mechanic for extremely varied gameplay.

Canabalt –

This was one of the games mentioned in the comments during our critique. While it’s similar to Small Bones in that it’s a runner, it’s quite fast-paced and much more reaction based than I think Small Bones will ever be. However, I really liked the two-player aspect to this game, and how it became somewhat of a race between the players. It seems like the terrain is randomly generated so that the track is infinite, and I wonder if someday we could implement two-player in Small Bones. We’d have to work on the mechanic a bit, since right now it definitely wouldn’t work for two players, but I think having to race/cooperate with only a finite number of skeletons could be really interesting.

Joshua

31 Mar 2013

Robb and I were talking about generating fractalish heat sinks which seems like a neat idea in situations the heat sink is to be passive (no fans are used to create flow over the heat sink). There are a ton of gorgeous branching phenomena in nature: diffusion limited-aggregation, vasculogenesis and angiogenesis (blood vessesl growth), plant growth, hele-shaw flow, dielectric breakdown, watershed formation, coral growth, etc.

Some of these systems actually solve engineering problems similar to that of transferring heat effectively. Coral colonies, for example, must balance various factors like fluid flow, particle capture and light exposure. Blood vessels networks allow oxygen to diffuse to every cell in a tissue while also not requiring too much resistance to blood flow.  These competing factors are solved by systems that grow rather algorithmically: there is no intelligent controller directing the growth process. Instead many simple agents following simple algorithms which interact to create complex adaptive forms.

There are many researchers in the field of computational biology and physics who are simulating these behaviors in order to understand the systems better.  In doing so they are actually solving engineering problems and creating rather aesthetic visualizations/models.  I think some of these projects could be imitated to make some neat art/engineering stuff. Like fractal heat sinks.

Angiogenesis: An Adaptive Dynamic Biological Patterning Problem 

check out the video here


This paper describes how a simulation of angiogenesis (the formation of blood vessel networks from already existing blood vessles) was built to mimic the growth and adaptation of real systems.  Basically a diffusing chemical dubbed vascular endothelial growth factor, VEGF, is released by tissue that is starved of oxygen (called hypoxic tissue).  When the concentration of VEGF around an existing vessels exceeds a critical value a new vessels sprouts and wiggles about randomly searching for a vessel with a little feeler.  When it finds one it fuses and blood begins to flow.  Vessels change there diameter according to internal pressure, viscous stresses and chemical signals released by other vessels. Vessels are also allowed to migrate in space due to forces exerted by other vessels.  The entire simulation is pretty impressive and combines many different details of blood vessel growth and operation.  The overall idea, however, is pretty simple: vessels grow randomly in areas of low oxygen and update there positions and sizes based on physical forces.  The result is surprisingly blood-vessel like.  It would be awesome, but a little daunting, to try to simplify this simulation and run it in three dimensions.  The basic idea could be modified for the case of heat transfer.  Perhaps the blood could be hot, and the goal would be to supply heat to all parts of a given area or volume. Really cold regions would release a diffusing growth factor. Of course the way heat transfer occurs is not the same as oxygen gas.

Nervous System Hyphae Lamps

So maybe combine nervous-system’s approach with the angiogenesis simulation? This is probably way to complex for a month’s worth of work…

Frac Therm

These guys realized that making a hierarchical fractal-like structure for a network of tubes causes a more even pressure distribution in the longer tubes and requires less pressure despite its increased surface area.  This is ideal for solar panels for heating fluid.  In a way, there approach is exactly what I was imagining a combination of the above two simulations.  Maybe this could be used in situations where the aesthetic properties of fractal-like networks could be appreciated by humans.  Maybe refrigerators could have visible heat sinks, or radiators would escape the confines of perforated sheet-metal enclosures.  Anyway I think this approach could be applied to heat-sinks and 3D printed/cast.  Perhaps the best direction for this project would be a 3D diffusion-limited algorithm with a post-processing algorithm to thicken branches for structural reasons.  Heat sinks, however do not just want lots of surface area.  They also need to ‘breath;’ air needs to be able to flow around them. Maybe imitating corals would be good? Or perhaps lungs (except the flow is inverted; outside the structure instead of within).

Yvonne

31 Mar 2013

Sketch your Game: Ideas/Research
“Sketch the levels for your game.”
My capstone project will be a continuation of my second project on interactivity. I am dropping the floor switches and wall projection in order to scale my project down to a size more appropriate to the act of sketching. My current goal is to create a game rig where an individual can sit, place a piece of paper on the table, sketch, and then have the characters projected directly onto the drawn image. I’m still trying to figure out a good method of character control, but at this point I am leaning toward a generic game controller.

I’m also tossing around different ideas. Perhaps certain symbols can be drawn that a character or the AI can interact with in special ways? I.E. death traps and portals. Also, I need to work on my AI. Being very new to programming (second semester of Processing), I’m not exactly sure where to start. The ghosts were programmed, admittedly, in a very stupid way. It would be nice to give them a bit more intelligence, I would prefer that their movements become more unexpected and challenging to interact with.

[edited April 02, 2013]

SketchSynth

This is very similar to what I want to do. Basically you sketch something (in this case, a GUI), the computer recognizes the sketched forms, a projector maps additional information, and a camera reads your motions for interactivity and feedback.

Scratch
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/archmage/9397
An interesting project. You basically sketch your own game. Walls, death traps, goals etc. Then you play your game. It doesn’t have the physical sketching part, but the general idea is similar to what I am going for. Maybe I’ll have different icons you can sketch that perform different things, kind of like the buttons/checkboxes/scrollbars on SketchSynth. …..Death traps!

Augmented Reality Project using BuildAR and Sketchup


In this project the computer recognizes certain symbols and letters. It responds by generating objects which you see on the computer screen. Pretty much like Reactables, except the physical tokens have an obvious meaning (the letters C A R generate a car). This is going back to my idea of being able to sketch certain icons and have the computer respond.