Robert Penner’s Easing Equations have been built into Flash since version 6 or 7 as the Tween class (search your Flash directory for Tween.as). But before those days, we had to do things manually. Penners equations in Actionscript are available for download here, with a nice little application to visualize each one here. This is great for when you need to port tweening into a different language like Processing or Openframeworks…
My bank cards have been erased. Oops!
Managed to get Theo Watson’s Vector Field example up and running…
This is important as it will allow the digital creatures in my thesis game to stay within level boundaries that I define. The dart throws will modify the vector field, coaxing them to move out of bounds, which kills their asses.
In 2005, Gary Stasiuk gave a lecture at FITC about his Digital Creatures project. It was a fantastic learning experience, and one of my first introduction to thinking formally about Boids. Google helped me find the original presentation, which is full of lots of helpful algorithms that I’d like to integrate into my thesis game… like proper flocking, not just neighbor avoidance…
Vector fields are how I can get the little digital creatures in my game to avoid walls and darts more intelligently. While the gravitational algorithms I’m using are great, they are somewhat limited in terms of how I can get creatures to avoid complex objects.
Enter vector fields:
Here we have an expired patent for a video game that uses vector fields to simulate intelligence in digital opponents. Found it on this awesome blog by Christer Ericson, Director of Tools and Technology at Sony Santa Monica (the God of War team).
–via [realtimecollisiondetection.net – the blog]
I got the Sony SSC-M183 camera ($80) and a manual focus/iris lens ($30) from Canal Alarm (link, map). I had to get the lens because the camera doesn’t come with one. Evan Roth has mentioned in the past that its good to have an auto-iris manual iris (Thanks Theo) on a camera when doing tracking.
I also picked up the Canopus ADVC110 from J&R (link, map).
I haven’t had a chance to test this setup in openframeworks/processing yet, but I will post the results as soon as its working (or not).
Still need to pick up:
I’m no longer putting off upgrading my Computer Vision setup. Here’s what I’ll be running all over town this afternoon looking for…
The current Dartmaps prototype catches input from darts with infrared LEDs in them and can control Google Earth through a variety of methods. This allows users to navigate and interact with Google’s geographic database with more aggressive and supervillainous interaction.