Particle Chimes

This is the final sketch that I submitted for presentation - I got help from Ben to fix the bugs that were occurring in my sketch and tweaked a few things like the transparency of the particles. I really like this end aesthetic and sound response - like with every project, given more time, I would have made some improvements, such as experiments with different bar height to represent different sounds. However, I feel this cute little application was very successful in it's own right. :)

Particle Beep 17

As a final touch to my sketch, I made the platforms drop on collision in accordance with the pitch of sound they play. When they get to the bottom of the screen, they reappear in their original positions. I like this because it begins to challenge the user and adds interest to the sketch as it's not just a simple scale anymore.

I am still having issues with the memory and sound bugs but am at a loss how to fix them. I have spent hours trying to fix them and have had both Ben and Steven look at it to no avail.

Particle Beep 14

This is my final code starting to take shape - the particles respond to the sound by changing in size depending on which platform they hit. I also changed the background size to make the particles visible on the screen as I felt white was the best colour for them. Other than that, the code pretty much remains the same as the previous sketch. I felt the sideways movement worked well.

Particle Beep 12

Here I was experimenting with different appearances of the particles, sort of like musical notes, but more importantly, got movement working with the platforms - they move across the screen and, when they hit the right side, reappear on the left, so they go round infinitely. Have put colours in to reflect the pitch of the sound being produced.

Particle Beep 11

I took away all movement here to concentrate on the sound. I put a differently pitched 'ting' sound on each platform - sort of like a computerised xylophone. I intend to make the colours reflect the pitch of the sound as the go down in pitch with vertical placement. I put back in the horizontal component of the particles' velocity to make them bounce in arcs across the platforms.

Particle beep 10

The problem with this version of the code was that the platforms moved as one clump together, rather than individually, hence the overall movement was very small.

Particle Beep 9

Here I had the one platform moving from side to side across  the screen, however there was a problem with my code that resulted in the particles bouncing off 'imaginary' platforms. I wanted to duplicate the moving platform so that I would have 5 staggered platforms moving from side to side across the screen.

Particle Beep 8

In this sketch, I took away the horizontal component of the velocity, and reduced the number of platforms. This allowed some particles to escape, rather than being trapped, and my intention was to have the particles move from side to side.

At this point I was having issues with a few bugs in the code. The 'OutOfMemoryError' keeps coming up. I have run this past both Ben and Steven and both have tried various solutions to the problem - neither have been able to fix it... so I'm stuck with the problem for now. :(

Particle Beep 7

Here I fixed the colours by sticking with RGB colour mode. I made the sine wave of platforms respond a little less tightly to the mouse, but other than that the code was similar to the last one. An issue was that lots of the particles were getting stuck because the platforms were so close together.

Particle Beep 5

Here, I encountered issues with colours - apparently my program doesn't recognise HSB values, even though I looked up how to do them to check. Hence the awful colour scheme. Anyway, this was an experimentation with just a 1/4 of a sine wave to see if this allowed for better interaction. At this stage I also changed the sound to a more hollow thud for a more natural sound.

At this stage an issue cropped up that the sound wasn't working as it should. A sound was produced when every particle was made, which is not what I had in mind. I had my tutor look at this and he sidestepped the problem with a mute function, however this still isn't working perfectly. Sometimes the particles make a noise when they hit the platforms, and sometimes they don't.

Particle Beep 4

This sketch was an experimentation with a more interesting interaction of the platforms with the mouse. The right hand (now upper) part of the curve follows the mouse, and the left side responds oppositely, to form a sine wave. The particles still bounce off the platforms.