The creature works hard to collect bubbles into a grid, and the user can either mess up its work by moving individual bubbles to anger it, or completely obliterate its creation, causing it to break down into panic.

Changes: the creature collects the bubbles into a grid, the creature moves nonlinearly, and the user can click on individual bubbles to move them and cause a slightly less intense reaction from the creature, who will just grunt and continue its duty.

So, an ecosystem:

I initially wanted something far more complex than this. I had wanted the viewer/user to be the creature and carry a lantern,. Of course, all we see is the lantern. The snow is meant to me repulsed by the lantern, as though it were frightened of it. I also wanted little glowing creatures to be attracted to the lantern and perhaps small woodland animals to fear the lantern and run away, but c’est la vie… there is only so much I can deal with.

Here is a video of my result. (I apologize for the low quality — my screengrabbing software can only deal with so much.) The first half shows one version where as soon as the lantern is lit the snow is repelled, the second half shows another version where it stops snowing completely when the lantern is lit (although those particles already formed off screen continue to fall until they die and are removed from the system.)

Perhaps it would be more interesting if I added an additional streetlamp… that would not be difficult.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIVixYb8zCY

(Snow is an ecosystem, is it not? Uuugh..)

The creature collects bubbles into the bottom right corner. The user, by holding down the mouse button, can push the bubbles around and thus mess up the setup the creature made, who will then proceed to panic and stream in agony. Eventually the creature calms back down and continue its job.

I decided to use Box2D for this part of the assignment also. I also started off with crabs collecting fruits but found germ thing collecting bubbles to be cooler.

My project turned out to be similar to Swetha’s. I find that I spend more time looking at her project though, because I just really want the bird to succeed, so I just sat there waiting for the moment that will never come. On the other hand, I know my creature will succeed unless I bully it, so I just go back to mess with it every once in a while.

Also, I found out that if I increase the bubble count and restitution, the bubbles will become greatly accelerated and will start beating up the creature, who will march on despite the onslaught. I feel like a bad person.

In this project I was experimenting with creating structures out of springs that were simplistic but also able to hold themselves upright as if they were living organisms. I wanted them to have a sense of where their head is and where their legs may be. This is why I made it so that when the creatures fell over they wee not able to move unless they wriggled to get back on their feet. These creatures are also a mother and child pair that interact with the mouse and with each other. Both of them are compelled to stay close together (the child more so than the adult) as well as compelled to avoid the mouse which is the ‘danger’ in their environment. The mouse cannot grab the adult but may get close enough to grab onto the child. If that is the case, the mother will feel compelled to try saving the child if she is within distance to do so. Once the user drops the baby, the mother will make an attempt to get back to the child but will not sacrifice herself for it, meaning she will still avoid you and abandon the child if necessary.

Processing code:

some sketches:

This simulation models sperm competing for an egg. The two sperm have different attraction levels to the egg, who is directed about using the mouse. This configuration casts the viewer/interacter as female, evading or pursuing suitors as she pleases. This subtle relationship and flirtation engaging and interesting, both as a viewer myself and in watching others play with the simulation.

I wanted to get in touch with origins of life. I find the actions of creationary forces—sperm and egg, electron and proton, cosmic forces—all have similar behaviors and appearances on a base level. Visually I wanted to make this connection by choosing forms that could serve as a diagram for any creationary situation listed above.

For my ecosystem, I started out with a fish pond because I remember a while back google had a random koi fish app somewhere on the internet. I tried searching it up again but I only see different android apps. I tried modelling the tail movements of the fish, but those ended up looking like tapeworms… So, I reused the curveVertex design that I featured in my first lasercut and added eyeballs. The lillypads have a gravitational force, so it looks like they try to hide from you. I applied Daniel Schiffman’s flocking examples to separate the fishes so they all wouldn’t go into the same spot due to the averaging of gravitational pulls. When you click the lillypads to make them disappear, the gravitational force gets added to the other lillypads so the fish don’t slow down. Pressing the space bar adds more lillypads. The lillypads, by the way, are cardioids, and they oscillate up and down and cause ripples. That was the funnest part of this project.

Then I decided to add frogs. I wanted them to leap onto a different lillypad when you clicked on one so that you would be “scaring them away”, but I had enough problems just getting them to jump on different lillypads. Giving them velocities ended up in hours of project failures, so this became my end product. Anywho, the best part about them is that they blink.

Here is my openprocessing upload, but the Javascript version of the code is far glitchier than the regular version run on processing:

Here are my sketches (notice I started out with the idea of Puffles hiding under rocks instead of a fish pond):