dave's blog of art and programming

  • Map rendering with OSM and HTML5 canvas

    This week I’m trying to get as much code done on the borrowed scenery game as possible – today, fixing the map rendering. I decided to load map tiles from OpenStreetMaps directly rather than using OpenLayers. This is done quite simply, accessing the millions of pre-rendered png files with URLs in this form: a.tile.openstreetmaps.org/z/x/y.png Where…

  • Clay mushrooms

    More work on the Borrowed Scenery project and a first screenshot, experimenting with different visual styles. I’m trying modelling clay to get a 3D look on the fungi and using Theun Karelse’s mockup characters for player avatars. The floor is being built out of map tiles of Ghent pulled from OpenStreetMap, using the OpenLayers API…

  • Borrowed Scenery 1.0 – joining imaginary and physical spaces

    FoAM is building a story for Electrified III: The Responsive City in Ghent in September. It’s called Borrowed Scenery 1.0 and follows on from our previous Borrowed Scenery 0.1 in the same city in 2009. The story will be built out of parts arising and inspired from the groworld project – human plant interfaces, but…

  • Websockets vs HTTP

    A bit of R&D this morning into websockets. Previous games like Naked on Pluto and Germination X have made use of standard HTTP protocol for their client server communication. This is easy to set up (as a newbie web programmer) and fine for prototyping and proof of concept – but has some serious problems with…

  • Cyclic score sketching for livecoding

    Live coding in cyclic time, while making the process of sketching, painting and general mark making as much part of the musical performance as the coding is. This is a prototype for “The Hair of the Horse”, a performance with Alex McLean and Hester Reeve as part of Live Notation at the Arnofini on Friday…

  • GX: Player statistics-o-rama

    Some stats on Germination X player activity since November: Total num players: 310 Time spent playing total: 181.80 hours Average player return duration: 9 days Players who returned for periods longer than 30 days: 21 players Average num sessions per player: 2.47 sessions Average num fruit/seed picked per player: 12.53 fruit Average num plants planted…

  • New game design

    I’m working on a new game as an art/science collaboration, and thought that it might be interesting to try the technique of making a board game first. The idea is not so much to make it work first time, but use physical pieces to figure out possible rules and try them without thinking about limitations…

  • Truffle Blocks

    A new project running here that brings together Germination X’s HTML5 game engine with Google’s Blockly in the spirit of Fluxus and particularly Scheme Bricks. I’ve had a plan for working on a visual programming language for browser based games (and got someway to implementing Scheme Bricks with the Naked on Pluto art installation). Blockly…

  • Localised sound, from a distance (part 3)

    Work has been continuing on “The swamp that was… a bike opera” with Kaffe Matthews and TimeLab Ghent. We now have a running system that’s playing sounds on the bikes, although we’re experiencing some harsh restrictions due to the combination of lowish BeagleBoard memory and slow SD card reading times. I’m considering a kind of…

  • Location based sound, part two

    Our first public test for the The swamp that was, a bicycle opera takes place next weekend, so I’ve been working on the on-bike software and getting more experience with the BeagleBoard while Kaffe builds up the sound pieces. In order to test the software, I’ve made a local map I can play with: Each…