Dancing Ribbons Reflection

This week I was inspired by any number of things. I wanted to do something with procedural map generation, because I wanted the player to be able to go very very fast for a long long time. Definitely didn’t get to Minecraft levels, but dipped my toes in the water briefly on   a 3D plane, which is admittedly a little tougher than a 2D one. I was also very inspired by the Unity Particle System engine, and wanted to see just how far I could take it in one direction. I especially wanted to tinker with the orbital offsets. So, I decided to combine a very fast player with particles that were also affected by the speed of the player and their position. The player is able to interact with the particle system directly because of this, and is able to create a pretty beautiful picture using purely random colors. The lifetime of the particles is also based on the speed of the player, causing the lines to be much longer when the player moves.  I experimented with many of the variables in the particle system, as well as beginning to attempt to grasp a concept of terrain generation (I was able to pull from a list of possible terrain and spawn it at a point  in front of the player). I also considered fully finishing the world generation, but thought it would also be interesting to allow the player to fall into the void, see what kind of effect the particles would have down there. There was a ton of tweaking that went into making the particles look good, and I kept changing the camera height to see what view captured the phenomena best. I learned that I have much to learn about 3D terrain generation, and that I should continue experimenting with it. I also learned a ton about the workings of particle systems, I tried to tick every check box I could while fooling around with them. I also learned how to create a shuffling playlist that starts with a random song! I really enjoy the visual effect and how I seem to be able to assign emotion to random colors paired with specific music. I think it’s quite beautiful, and can sometimes look like a painting.