All posts by poc215

Hangman!

Telecommunication

As a final revisit to our ICM class, I’ve created another game for the Telecommunications homework unlike the one-that-tried to-be-ambitious-with-rotation-but-failed. This game is a two-player Hangman (under 10 letters or less). The first player sets the word and then the second player actually guesses. And the actual communication part is to indicate loss or win by LEDS! There is also a RESET function if you lose or wish to choose another word. 

**Disclaimer: capital letters aren’t recognized and you can’t use backspace. Furthermore, when guessing a letter, “spaces” are counted as incorrect and somehow if you don’t enter anything (i.e. press “ENTER” without an actual input), it may break my game.

Choose Word

 

Loss

Win

lost win

 

 

And here is the code: 

And here is the letter class:

 Here is Arduino code:

Progress to Infinity

Final Project

For my final project, I made another game. There were about 4 factors that went into this game idea.

  1. Unlike my other games, I wanted to challenge myself and not be reliant on PImages for the actual graphics and physically draw shapes and lines myself.
  2. Since we  so recently wrote our blog post on Computational Media, I think I was still very oriented towards that meditation on computers and their capabilities, etc.
  3. I wanted to incorporate the first part of our class that focused on the Arduino because it was so integral to our course with its scope on the physical world of computing.

So with all those factors in mind, I thought about the circle and how basically it is a polygon with an infinite amount of sides. This topic of “infinity” reminded me of David Deutsch’s Beginning of Infinity , where  he claims that progress is boundless – or infinite. So by somehow weirdly merging the those thoughts in my mind, the game where the goal was to become a circle (that represented infinity with its “infinite” number of sides) became its own ” progress towards infinity”.

This is my first multiplayer game (woohooo, double the fun!) and the movement of the players are controlled by the  ASDW and the arrow keys. In each level, there are foreign words floating around that mean the number of the next shape the player must become. To advance, the player must retrieve all of his respective words. For example, for a square to become a polygon, the player must collect all 5 words that mean “5”. The words are also the same color as the player so it makes the game easier than just a mere translation exercise and actually possible to finish within a more reasonable amount of time.

Here is the tutorial demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4atf-fCveh0

 

Twist the dials to change your color!
Twist the dials to change your color!

 

I did throw in one last surprise so unfortunately the file needs to be in the data folder along with the fonts in order for the code to run correctly.

So to download everything: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B9jm5VZVC2_oNFZtVUdCZ1hXMVk&usp=sharing

And here is the scary code. The switch statements got very repetitive but I wasn’t able to modularize the actual level changing function because then it ended up being that I would have to return an array and somehow pass it back into the same function (all because I have so many switches within each level).

Here is the SHAPE class:

Here is the TEXT class:

To improve on this game, and to progress on this further, I’d maybe think about venturing into the third dimension for the shapes, making it more interactive (with the video tracking) so it can be a team game, and making obstacles!

I had a really fun time this class  and I had a lotta fun with you all, through bugs of frustration to sheer hilarity to coding successes! : )

 

Computational Media

Characteristics

My impression of computers has always been is the cold and logical digital machine of  1’s and 0’s. It is capable of extreme computation, a brain whose organization can is far superior than the human brain’s. It’s still unbelievable that these machines are the driving force behind latest innovations of today. I’m used to thinking the computer as a GPT (general purpose technology) with the “potential of impacting different sectors of the economy. And as a potential computer science major, I am want delve into the possibilities. And in this class, I was fortunate enough to explore the more physical aspect of it with the Arduino and the 3D printer.  The field of computer science has been reeking with  progress and inventions.

Until this class, I had never really thought  about the actual communication between humans and computers. David Deutsch in The Beginning of Infinity argues that the jump to universality,  or as he says: “the tendency of gradually improving systems to undergo a sudden large increase in functionality, becoming universal in some domain” and that it is solely through digital systems that this jump is reached. And he explores language and its evolution as a kind of digital process because of all the rules of language that “cover not only every word but also every possible word.”  One the one hand, computers with their own language of 1’s and 0’s are able to accomplish many more things than humans. With algorithms and functions, they are able compute more faster and more efficiently than us. But on the other hand, humans with their own language have furthering their ideas much longer than computers have been (since the beginning of  civilization), and are also the ones responsible for the creation of the computer itself.  And it is because of these “digital” rules that humans have been able to achieve so much.

But there is also the “analog” aspect of human language, and it is how humans have tried to translate these aspects into their created digital computer language that is truly interesting. The digital is cold-hearted yes/no, whil the analog is the more emotional and tonal part of language. While we have the digital rules to construct sentences, there are far more nuances to the human language that convey how we are “feeling”. The best way to understand the complication between translating the analog aspect of the human language and the digital understanding of the computer is a conversation by email vs. a conversation on the phone vs. even in person. The digital email message is just the basic message itself but the actual feeling of the writer is often lost or misunderstood. However, in person or on the phone, the listener can understand the communicator more thoroughly because he is aided by gestures, facial expressions, and the tone of  voice. Thus it is putting the analog part of human language back into the digital computer language that I think is one biggest goals of computational media. 

Often times when choosing between analog and digital there are clear sides, but when they try to interact and “work together” it is interesting to see the result. And I think digital art is one of the clearest way people have been successfully expressing themselves and their feelings through computers. I haven’t had much exposure to it.e traditional sense of the fine arts, but I think because of the growing potential computers have, the potential of digital art is also growing too.  

The other interesting field I don’t know much about but I think interesting is AI. I really don’t have much exposure to this field, but  it is interesting to compare a more human-like robot to the more pure analytically-minded IBM’s Watson who participated in Jeopardy. In this field, I think that the analog communication of human language will be successfully interpreted by these digital machines of ours.

Anyways, to finish off this meditation, here is an digital art installation at a gallery in Japan that  I worked at.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4IlCGAxlz4

It’s simple in design, but I like how it captures the wonder and appreciation of, and curiosity about the world — the more analog feelings of my heartstrings.

Madlibs!

Data

For my data assignment, I’ve decided to create a madlibs game. PS. You can’t use the “backspace”, so be sure to check your spelling!

madlibs

Here’s the link to download:

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B9jm5VZVC2_odFJUTWdZQlMtcFU&usp=sharing

 

Spring!

Pixels

This game was supposed to be a simple “Welcome” to the spring and a farewell to the winter. I used the color tracking technique, so the player is a bird. In the background, the snow and rain fall. The bird must simply catch the sun and then slowly the bad weather will clear.

To downlaod the e

 

Here is my SHAPE class.