Last week was a short week; my birthday was on Monday and Friday was July 4th. I spent most of Tuesday and Wednesday trying to fix the labyrinth, and got pretty close to completing it, but not quite. The code from the alpha channel demo is complex, and variable-naming did not help with the confusion, and translating the mouse location to Wiimote accelerometer values seemed to be more time consuming than just revising my original algorithm to improve the collision detection. I got some help from Nick on the algorithm, but I’ll have to wait a couple of weeks until he visits and can help me some more on the code.
Meanwhile, I realized that I didn’t want to be spending the majority of the summer coding games that already exist. If I were to continue creating small game demos, I wouldn’t really be doing anything new, just replacing existing keyboard/mouse game controls with Wiimote input, and that just didn’t seem like enough. I considered moving on to Flash, which has a slightly more popular base for Wiimote input/programming, not to mention a much more popular following online. Since the Director Xtra would not work when published, it also severely limits the distributability of the demos that I create. Working with Flash would open up my knowledge base on the Wiimote’s compatibility with other multimedia applications, which would lead to unknown new discoveries.
Fortunately, I was able to meet with my co-adviser Orit on Thursday to show her my progress and discuss this new path with her. She agreed and suggested that I create an application that allows multi-user, collaborative interaction that showcases the Wiimote’s capabilities. An example would be an art “show” that changes colors and sounds depending on input. I’ll be going back to some of the ACM articles to see if I can get any new ideas with this fresh input.
Short week, new direction
Last week was a short week; my birthday was on Monday and Friday was July 4th. I spent most of Tuesday and Wednesday trying to fix the labyrinth, and got pretty close to completing it, but not quite. The code from the alpha channel demo is complex, and variable-naming did not help with the confusion, and translating the mouse location to Wiimote accelerometer values seemed to be more time consuming than just revising my original algorithm to improve the collision detection. I got some help from Nick on the algorithm, but I’ll have to wait a couple of weeks until he visits and can help me some more on the code.
Meanwhile, I realized that I didn’t want to be spending the majority of the summer coding games that already exist. If I were to continue creating small game demos, I wouldn’t really be doing anything new, just replacing existing keyboard/mouse game controls with Wiimote input, and that just didn’t seem like enough. I considered moving on to Flash, which has a slightly more popular base for Wiimote input/programming, not to mention a much more popular following online. Since the Director Xtra would not work when published, it also severely limits the distributability of the demos that I create. Working with Flash would open up my knowledge base on the Wiimote’s compatibility with other multimedia applications, which would lead to unknown new discoveries.
Fortunately, I was able to meet with my co-adviser Orit on Thursday to show her my progress and discuss this new path with her. She agreed and suggested that I create an application that allows multi-user, collaborative interaction that showcases the Wiimote’s capabilities. An example would be an art “show” that changes colors and sounds depending on input. I’ll be going back to some of the ACM articles to see if I can get any new ideas with this fresh input.