Instructions: There are no key presses or mouse interactions, only interactions with what the computer microphone can detect. Go wild! Run with chuck narrative.ck main.ck
My visualizer is meant to convey the theme of hope among turmoil; that even in dark times, there is still hope and that you are still present, that the world is still present, that there are still things to fight for and constants to anchor yourself on. As a result, there is the constant heart and heartbeat throughout the visualizer despite the intensity of the fog; even if you cannot see your way forward, you’re still going in the right direction and where your heart needs to be.
I had a hard time coming up with a musical narrative. As I had no musical background, I was asking my friends for help with what kind of narrative to present, and the idea of a heartbeat surfaced. There are, of course, many songs that contain a beating motif, but the one that I remember the most clearly is “Giselle,” composed by Gao for the visual novel The House in Fata Morgana. As a result, I quickly latched onto the idea of hope as a theme for my narrative, and due to having finished Disco Elysium somewhat recently, came up with the title for my visualizer from the quote “In the dark times, should the stars also go out?” Thus, to create some feeling of conflict and tension and loss, I adapted parts of Giselle (transcribed by Itouikukur0 on YouTube) and disassembled it into parts such that they vaguely gestured at the original melody and some disembodied hope for the future.
With my milestone 2 progress being rather sunny and peaceful, I decided that I needed to alter the mood and atmosphere, hence the difference in color scheme and general tone. So in a way, my process was a back-and-forth between visualizer and narrative, and they were in constant dialogue with each other: I built the general functionality of the visualizer, then built the narrative once a value was in mind, then reshaped the visualizer to fit it. I think that this went well; by not fully committing to the aesthetics of the visualizer, I was able to give myself leeway to explore what value I wanted to present through my narrative and mold the visualizer in that image.
In terms of help, I received help from Ge, Andrew, and Tae Kyu (creating a circular waveform, but it didn’t end up in the final project).
In terms of assets, I used:
ocean waves sounds
thunder sound
With modifications:
snippets of piano transcription for “Giselle”
sun texture
heart shape
My experience with working on this milestone:
I had actually planned for a completely different concept, but due to the current limitations of ChuGL, I had to improvise a different one instead. As a result, I decided to take the (sound) waves literally, and manifested an ocean. There were a number of features that I actually wanted to implement, but due to not yet having fluency in ChuGL, I had a hard time trying to figure out how to implement them even with the help of the tutorial and documentation. Despite these setbacks, I did have a fun time trying to find ways to lean into the beach-y, surf-y vibe to try and transform the ingredients, as competitive cooking shows would say. Along the way, I kept thinking up new ideas that I would likely need to go to office hours for, so at present I don't feel confident about being able to implement them.
Other than issues with fluency in ChuGL, I also had a difficult time understanding how the world is lit in ChuGL; I would like to learn how to use different scene elements to go about different environmental effects such as fog and lighting. I'm not quite sure why, but whenever I add a colored background, it seems like the colors that I set for the GLines get darker; instead of a bright orange, the sun rays are instead a muddy brown, which was a surprise. Additionally, I did also find it hard to figure out how the mathematics behind some features that I wanted to implement would translate into code, though I hope to spend more time deciphering this.
It also came as a surprise how easily I get motion sick. I knew that I was prone to it, but I didn't think that just a gentle rocking and the implication of being at sea would kind of make me feel the beginnings of seasickness (?), but it did!
ChucK code + assets for Milestone 2
Just the ChucK code for Milestone 2