Midterm Project – Kite Flying
The idea for my Midterm Project came from Dan’s Forces example on his website. In that example, an object falls through a horizontal region of the screen that is of a lighter shade than the rest. While there, the object reacts to a new force, which is labeled as water, and slows down. The whole point of this example is to show how an object can respond to different forces depending on its location. I took that example and altered it so that the “shaded” region was vertical and the object was moving horizontally. Now when the object entered that region it moved upward as if something was counteracting the force of gravity.
I would now like to use this new upward force in a simulation and/or game of kite flying, which I developed in the second week of class. The user and/or player will now be in control of the person who his holding the rope that is tethered to the kite. The kite is flying above the ground and is in interacting with four separate forces. Gravity is pulling the kite down. Wind is blowing the kite from left to right. And finally there are two separate forces for an updraft that is pushing the kite higher. One smaller updraft is randomly moving back and forth across the screen, buffeting the kite and realistically nudging it upward. The other updraft is a stronger column that really propels the kite higher when it gets caught inside. This column is also placed randomly on the screen but unlike the other updrafts, it does not change positions after the start of the simulation.
There is a lot of potential with this code. Each force can easily be calibrated to adjust the kite’s behavior and make it act more realistically. In addition, new forces can be added. As a game, it would be very interesting to have random objects such as planes, helicopters or even a thunderstorm (rain falling from it through particle generation, perhaps?) pass through the screen. Each object could exert a new type of force on the kite such as a jet wash or a downdraft. The player could also exert a force by pressing the mouse button to try to pull the kite down. For the Midterm, however, I will just keep the kite flying as a simulation.