Alright I’m back. Still got a couple of other projects going on that are sucking me away from the tutorials, but I figured that I should get at least one tutorial up this week to let everyone know that I’m still alive. As I mentioned, I’m going to dive into… Read More
It seems that everyone who has ever programmed in Java has, at some point, created a variation on John Conway’s Game of Life. Well I wouldn’t want to break with tradition. Here’s mine. This is just a code dump, but the applet is so simple that it doesn’t really require… Read More
Sunday is looking a little overcast, a little gloomy, and a lot like a good day to tackle a complicated tutorial: Voronoi diagrams. I’m sure you’ve seen them before. Given a set of points, a Voronoi diagram defines a series of cells surrounding each point. Each cell contains all points… Read More
Here’s another brief tutorial. This one relates to object collisions and velocity transfers. Basically, we’re making simulated billiard balls: objects that bounce off each other and the sides of the applet. Not too much else to introduce, so I’ll just get started… What it looks like Here are the files:… Read More
This isn’t a formal tutorial… just a source code dump. I made this randomized, springy IK grass in Flash for Curiobot a while ago, but decided that it was too CPU-intensive to risk combining with all of the DOM-scripting on the site. As such, I didn’t bother optimizing it much,… Read More
Humans love maps. They love the mapping of any type of information, not strictly geographical. Maps are bursting with information. They transcend the boundaries of language. Maps are good. I’m going to make a map today. Well, a globe. It’s going to be a very basic extension of our icosahedron-based… Read More
A couple of years ago I was walking home from work and thinking about how writing to a blog is often a one-way process. Like talking to a wall. The most important part of the process, for most bloggers, is the creation of an entry: the release of words. The… Read More
This quick tutorial will show a more reasonable alternative to the electronsphere, which addressed the problem of distributing points evenly on a sphere. We’ll be creating a geodesic sphere (like at the Epcot center) using a subdivided icosahedron. It’s a relatively simple script and inexpensive in terms of CPU usage…. Read More
Today’s tutorial is going to be shorter and sweeter than the last. The problem we’ll address is how to structure a tree-like object in a way that’s similar to a real-life tree. It must contain a set of user-defined variables that affect the “species” of tree, but still allow some… Read More
This first tutorial will address the question of how to evenly distribute points on a sphere. It’s not as simple as it sounds. I’ll be addressing one method today, which I’ll be calling the electronsphere. The idea is this: treat each point as if it were an electron – repelling… Read More