Lu Wilson

TODEPOND TIMES: Beats

Added 2023-03-25 10:40:09 +0000 UTC

Hello there. Welcome back to another weekly edition of the...

🔮 TODEPOND TIMES 🔮

What's new this week?

State

When you use one of my tools, like CellPond or ScreenPond, you can be in various different 'states'.

For example, you could be "clicking", "dragging", "drawing", "grabbing", or even just "idle".

Things can get complicated! When you move your mouse/trackpad/finger - what should happen? The answer depends on what state you're in.

So I usually make a 'state machine' to handle this. It lets us separate the behaviour of each state, and deal with them all in isolation.

I make a small state machine for most of my projects. And I end up doing the same thing again-and-again-and-again.

So I've now made a little reusable state machine for all my future projects. It's really simple, but it's all I need at this point.

Beats

I've been using the state machine in Arroost - a new cellular automata that I'm making for the next video.

At first glance, it seems like Arroost takes place on a 16 by 12 grid. But, similar to CellPond and ScreenPond, it's not fixed - it's just the default, representing 16 beats, and 12 notes.

The cellular automata shares some similarities with Langton's Ant. Instead of little ants moving around the grid, we've got arrows stepping forwards in time to the beat.

Initially, each arrow fits neatly into a single cell in the grid. However, arrows can grow and shrink by interacting with other things in the world - causing them to become misaligned with the grid.

When they change size, they also change how far they move with each step. But no matter what, they always 'keep up' with the speed of the music. This lets you change the tempo. You can have 4 beats in a bar, or 2, or 3, or anything.

I'm really happy to have started on this now! And I can't wait to share more about how it will work :)

Thank you so much being here! I'm a guest on a podcast this weekend to talk about some unusual programming things. And that never would have happened without your support! I hope you have a really great week. See you next time! 🐸

Days since tode fell asleep: 79
Days since bot went missing: 44