ICM entry #1

Coding looks complex and daunting. I've always struggled with it, especially when it comes to trying to find my errors. Suffice to say I thought ICM would be the bane of my existence, however, I find it incredibly interesting.

One of the fields where I find computation to be at the center of is video games. The amount of progress made in the industry since the '70s is staggering. If you compare Pong to the games being developed lately it's difficult to believe that its the same medium. New genres of games have been made thanks to the ever-evolving tech used by video game companies.

Pong (1972)

Ghost of Tsushima (2020)

One of my favorite kinds to do is watching GDC (Game Developer Conference) panels where different industry veterans, designers, programmers, etc come to discuss the current climate of the industry. They host panels, tutorials, and summits each tackling different topics such as new physics engines, the social impact of games, game education, and sometimes even rants about the problems plaguing the industry. Video game development like any other computational medium is a collaborative one, where individuals with different skill sets come together to create new experiences, solve problems, or challenge the status quo.

A personal project of mine is to create a platform or application that would help users discover whether they were at risk of catching a disease, sort of like an early warning system. It would caution users' primary care physicians that their patients may be at risk, allowing for faster preventative care to be administered. I haven't thought about the logistics of this project yet, it's just been something at the back of my mind lately.

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For our ICM assignment I wanted to create something similar to a light being split into the different color spectrum (like the Dark Side of the Moon album cover by Pink Floyd) instead of light it would be different shapes colliding with each other.

Light splitting or Pink Flyod's Dark Side of the Moon

My P5 Sketch

Rectangle code in P5

I decided to make my canvas a simple 400x400 size so that I could have the beam of light going diagonally. I began with a rectangle in the center of my canvas and worked my way backward by adding different shapes from the list we had to use.

Quad code in P5

The trickiest shape to add was the quad. After checking the P5 reference page and a lot of trial and error I made the quad look like a black box that was emitting the beams of light.

Arc code in P5

Another hiccup I faced was trying to make a pie that fit into the beam, making the pie wasn't difficult just getting the right size was a little annoying. (Which is my fault since I was adamant on having everything fit in the cone of light and have every shape layer on top of each other).

The only piece of code that I completely didn't understand was the curve. I spent ages on it and decided to scrap the squiggly lines I made because it didn't fit with the rest of the sketch. Regardless of that, I had a lot of fun doing this assignment, I got to be creative with code which I didn't even think was possible.