andy-emma-interactive-demo-2023

This is a little p5 prototype for a simple music generation toy.

Live Demo

Live demo here: https://andymakesgames.com/extras/files/emma/little-interactive/index.html

This should work on desktop & mobile (only tested on my iPhone 13).

Please try this demo before reading further since one of the things that needs to be tested about it is how well it can be understood without prompting.

The sounds are from here: https://freesound.org/people/Jovica/sounds/40020/

What I like about this

• This is loosely based on my favorite Electroplankton game, Beatnes. Here is a video. It plays a simple beat, and gives you some instruments. When you hit something it gets added to the beat like a sequencer, but is removed after 4 plays. What I enjoyed about it was that it had enough of a memory to create a clear rhythm, but since things drop out, it's always evolving and never really gets too crammed (even if it does you just wait a second). I think that kind of playfulness is nice for an experience like this.

• In terms of the interaction, I think it is intuitive and that people generally enjoy playing with simple physics simulations.

Doubts / Room to expand

• The sound samples are extremely placeholder. This is not my area of expertise.

• I think the field may be a bit barren right now. Maybe there needs to be some obstacles in the middle or something. These could maybe represent a more percussive instrument.

• The bouncing ball vibe feels like it might want to be some kind of rube goldberg experience and it is not that right now.

• Things are not quantized right now so there is no distinct beat. I think the repetition smooths over some of this but if we go in this direction we probably want to tweak the physics a bit to try and make sure that the balls hit walls on beat.

• It should have multi-touch on mobile.