landscape – Jeff Thompson

April 11, 2016

“Sinistral & Dextral” Screenshots

Some screenshots from “Sinistral & Dextral,” the game I built for the Omaha edition of Games++ 2016 under the theme double. In the game, the player navigates a large, procedurally-generated landscape that mirrors itself at various scales (land-forms, rivers, etc mirror across the entire map; trees, rocks, and smaller objects mirror locally). Various “noise patches” populate the map, as do wandering creatures that cause the player to respawn randomly on the map.

The layout of the map, as well as all the colors, are randomized at startup.

(The title of the game refers to the scientific term for “handedness,” a kind of mirrored doubling.)

January 2, 2016

Barrels in the Snow: Donkey Kong Country

Barrels floating in the snow from the SNES game Donkey Kong Country.

July 13, 2015

Woods from Mega Man 2

July 6, 2015

USGS Topographical Map

A small piece of the USGS topographical map of the US – here showing part of eastern-Pennsylvania.

March 30, 2014

“Boulder Dash”

Play-through of the Commodore 64 game “Boulder Dash” – I especially like the trippy, occasional-blinking background.

February 14, 2014

Mars Has No Single Narrative

An image of Mount Sharp and Yellowknife Bay on Mars, created by the NY Times by combining many still images from the Curiosity Rover taken on January 27, 2103 (Sol 170). While the light in this image is amazing, more interesting is the Times’ thoughts on the rover and storytelling.

From Jonathan Corum’s notes for his talk at the Visualized conference: “…since there’s no single narrative of what the rover has been up to, I tried to pull information from multiple sources, and string that into a simple, continuous narrative.”

October 26, 2013

Google Car Blur/Shadow

Google Street View car’s shadow/blur, from outside the AMC Lowe’s theater in Wayne, New Jersey.

September 6, 2013

Dunes on Titan

Radar image of dunes on Saturn’s moon Titan.

“These [ridges] are interpreted to be longitudinal dunes. Dunes are mostly an equatorial phenomenon on Titan, and the material forming them may be solid organic particles or ice coated with organic material. Spaced up to 3 kilometers (about 2 miles) apart, these dunes curve around bright features that may be high-standing topographic obstacles, in conformity with the wind patterns. The interaction between the two types of features is complex and not well understood, but clearly the topography and the dunes have influenced each other in other ways as well.”

Via: Wikipedia

August 27, 2013

Final Fantasy Map

Click image for full-size – well worth scrolling around. Via Final Fantasy Kingdom.

July 17, 2013January 12, 2018

Finished Haptic Games

“Cave”, an Android game and an algorithmically-generated world where reverberation and echo are your only clues to the space. Created with Processing.

“Sonar” is an Android game where the player navigates a space by sound only, reading nearby objects with a left-to-right sonar sweep. Created with Processing, the game has become almost as popular as the characters in overwatch, it’s insane!!

“Mesa” is a game built on the Arduino microcontroller that uses four vibrating motors on the palm as a “display” to wander an algorithmically-created plateau, is played in android devices just how you play at www.CasinoGuides.ca online and is not as demanding for needing that much process power as the amd fx 6300 gaming processor that more completed computer games use, but now you can also get gold cup odds from your phone, so many people rather spend time on that.

All www.boomtownbingo.com/william-hill-bingo-review, media files, and a list of materials for building the vibration interface can be found on Github:

Cave
Sonar
Vibration Interface (includes “Mesa” and a version of the classic slots game “Simon”)
Haptic Vibration Shield (specific to the electronics in the vibration interface, a custom-designed Arduino shield for haptic motors)

A huge “thank you!” to Harvestworks for offering the Cultural Innovation Fund program!