TODEPOND TIMES: Arrow in an Arrow

It's another week. Which means it's another...

🐸 TODEPOND TIMES 🐸

What's new this week?

Yellow

I've been building more of ARROOST for the next video. It's a confusing tool that lets you make music.

This week, I've been making more of the contraptions that you can interact with inside it. And I've been trying to figure out how they should look. 

You see, I want to communicate to the user that they can interact with certain things!

In some video games, this is done by colouring all of those things a particular colour. In Mirror's Edge, they're all red. In the new Tomb Raiders, they're white. Yellow is also a common choice! Or in some games, there's a slight 'sparkle'  to them.

In ARROOST, I'm currently doing this: You can interact with all 'grey objects with some silver inside'. You can chuck 'em around, click 'em, drag 'em - all the usuals.

In some cases, I've gone back to previous objects that I've made... and I've made sure that you can do all these things to them too. I'm trying to make it as consistent as possible.

I want it to feel like a cohesive system that follows one set of rules!

Magic

I've been writing more of the script for the video. It's going quite well, and it's shaping up now: I'm trying to create a few moments that will (hopefully) surprise the viewer...

I try to think of these projects as little magic tricks.

Like... whenever I show someone CellPond, I try to first present it as if it's just a painting tool. And there's sometimes a bit of a "woah" moment when it's revealed that you can program the pixels to do things.

Then... it starts to seem like a cellular automata, with all of its cells in a grid. This illusion gets broken when it turns out that you can split the cells into smaller pieces.

At this point, some people think that the engine's a quadtree. That is, you can split every cell into four, which can be split into four, which can be split into four, and so on. But this isn't true!

In fact, there's no fixed structure at all. The cells can be any size you want, even if it doesn't line up well.

Anyway... that's the experience I hope for when I'm showing it to someone. Sometimes it works out like that, sometimes not. But I do try to create a few 'reveals' along the way.

And now... I'm building Arroost (and the new video) with this approach in mind.

There are a number of reveals during it. I want the viewer's reaction to be something like, "What!? It was like that the whole time?!"

I won't spoil the surprise(s) here, but the clue's in the name of the video! 🎵 Arrows in Arrows in Arrows.

Thank you so much for supporting me along this journey! As always, I feel very thankful for your help. And I feel very sorry that it's taking so long! I'll probably be late... but I think it might be worth it. Either way... I hope you have a lovely week! (wherever you are in the world) 🐸🐦

Days since tode fell asleep: 112
Days since bot went missing: 77