March 4th

CREATURES!

Last week Victor introduced the basic OOP ideas. OOP techniques lend themselves well to many biological metaphors -- it's easy to think of classes as types of organisms (ants) and to think of objects as particular individuals (an ant named Jojo). Today in class we'll build (from scratch!) a system of autonomous sound-makers that interact in an environment. We'll spend the class coding together, then your homework will be to take what we've done so far and expand/modify it.

Okay, here's what we came up with:

import ddf.minim.*;
import ddf.minim.signals.*;

AudioOutput out;

int num_creatures = 5;
Creature[] creatures = new Creature[num_creatures];

void setup(){
   size(400, 400);
   println("doing setup...");
   frameRate(10);

   setupSound();
   setupCreatures();
}

void setupSound(){
   Minim.start(this);
   out = Minim.getLineOut();
}

void setupCreatures(){
   for(int i=0; i width / 20){
         size = width / 20;
      }
   } 

   void updateSound( ){
      sine.setAmp(amp());
      sine.setFreq(freq());
      sine.setPan(pan());
   }

   void nudgePosition(int dx, int dy){
      x += dx; 
      y += dy;
      updateSound();
   }

   float pan(){
      return x / width;    
   }
   float freq(){
      return  y * 10;
   }
   float amp(){
      println(size/ (width / 20.0));
      return size / (width / 20.0);
   }
}

And here's the applet.

Homework: extend the example, or if you're ambitious, start fresh and make some creatures of your own.