CPS Week 5 - Objects are not exhausted - life as a particle

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Theme:

Objects oriented ontology.

Context:

- Everything game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYHp8LwBUzo. The trailer is narrated by Alan Watts, who speaks about life, meaning, the self, and the relationship between objects. Namely, that much of what we believe to be meaningful is dependent on our perspective: we say a hand is a whole object, but under a microscope the particles which make it up would look very far apart. That the "self" too is an illusion.
- Buddhist philosophy explains that we (and everything) are a series of causally related events, all related to each other, and that the "self" is an illusion. The particles which make us up will eventually separate and form other things. 

Method:

Create a "particle" controllable character who is slow, but can grab onto different objects (all with different properties and movements) to move around. 

Response:

I created a tiny "particle" object represented by 2-3 pixels and introduced inputs that allowed the player to move the particle, albeit very slowly. I then created a bird object that moves horizontally across the screen, significantly faster than the player object, and destroys itself when it is outside the camera view. I added the ability for the player to "grab on" to the bird if the two objects were colliding and the player held space, which would change the player state and apply the bird's movement to itself. I then created a controller object which would periodically spawn birds from the others side of the screen. Then I introduced several more objects: a raindrop which falls vertically, a slow-moving cloud which propels the player object faster in the direction of player input, and a vortex which pushes the player extremely fast away from itself relative to how close the player is to the centre of the vortex. Each of these are periodically spawned by the controller object. To create more variation between same-objects, I added some random variation in their movement, direction, and speeds. Finally, I added colours to each object to more easily differentiate them (raindrops = blue, birds = yellow, clouds = green, vortex = red).