This last week I have been considering the intention of my experiments for both IOL and CPS, as well as my methods for experimentation. I decided that trying to create a new experiment in Unity each week was counter-productive as I was spending too much time setting up the environment and little time experimenting. I decided I would instead, use each week as an opportunity to build a new tool within the space I had been previously constructing.
I also reconsidered my project intention this week to include:
- A central ‘mood’ for the interactive space which can be altered by the space and in turn alters the space.
- Mood alters space: colour palette, speed, urgency, weather, sound, distribution of objects in space
- Space alters mood: concentration of agents in frame effects mood energy, appearance of antagonist increases ‘ominous’ mood, disposition of agents towards each other effects ‘tension’, change in weather patterns
- Mood changes over time: Narrative structure promotes movement between moods, for example increasing the tension of the mood controller over time until a climactic point upon which the tension is resolved
This week's video shows:
- A new UI element which controls the central moods, currently "ominous", "energetic", "busy" and "randomness" I might change these labels to make them a bit clearer. Currently they all change values but only "ominous" has any effect in the space
- Button to begin, pause and reset the generating of up to 100 agents and 100 objects
- Agents have 4 behavioural states; idle, wandering, noticing, conversation. All equal in length.
- Agents have the following internal traits; colour, speed, visual range, and idle, wander, notice and conversation state durations. Other than colour, all traits are currently the same for each agent.
- Objects (cubes) have the following randomly assigned traits; colour, scale, rotation. They are all spawned so that they rest on the ground plane.
- Changing the "ominous"value of the scene changes the colour variation of the generated agents/ objects and the colour saturation of the ground plane.
Next steps for experimentation:
- Sliders:
- Energetic - Agents move faster and change behavioural states more rapidly. Objects vibrate in place or blink.
- Busy - More agents and objects are spawned. Agents have shorter idle and conversation states and longer wander states.
- Randomness - Objects and agents are generated with a higher degree of variation in all traits.
- Mood presets - Once I've found a few definable states in the space I want to try to create a controller which can adjust the mood of the space over time in a way which implies a narrative. For example, starting with a light, slow, sparse mood, increasing busy and ominous values until there is a period of conflict after which the mood is resolved somehow. I might need to give agents the capacity to engage in and resolve conflict to demonstrate this.