Random Walker through RGB Space
My approach for this assignment was very simple. I decided to simply create the random walker like we did earlier in class and give it a 50% chance of moving towards the mouse pointer, at the times where it was not moving towards the pointer, I assigned it a random movement through the RGB space.
While my code was mostly based on the random Walker we had already worked on in class, the section with the movement within the RGB space was something I explored and was glad I was able to accomplish.
Below is a snippet of that section:
else {
// Random walker changing color in RGB
let choice = floor(random(3)); // 0 for R, 1 for G, 2 for B
//changing color components with =in respective range
if (choice === 0) {
this.r = (this.r + random(-5, 5)) % 255;
} else if (choice === 1) {
this.g = (this.g + random(-5, 5)) % 255;
} else {
this.b = (this.b + random(-5, 5)) % 255;
}
As shown above this was part of my if statement that determined the movement of the Walker. If the Walker did not move towards the mouse, that is, the randomly generated value was less than the probability, then the color of the random Walker would change. In this case I decided to make the change specific to every color component. I created assigned a random number from 0-3 to the variable choice and from there I created nested if statements that were responsible from changing the RGB color components accordingly. I created a range for change between (-5, 5) to ensure that the respective components do not change drastically allowing for a smooth look in the color transformations.
Challenges:
The main challenge I faced was in terms of having the Walker move at first. I had all the elements of the code according the example we did in class but it turned out that I was failing to update the value of the coordinates of the direction which would result in my Walker staying still on the page. Once I added the lines that incremented the value of the coordinates I eliminated the issue in hand. I also added the p5js embedded ‘normalize’ function to the direction vector this way I was able to scale the vectors length to 1 while preserving its direction. This prevented a scattered display of the walker but rather a uniform continuous line.
Reflection and Ideas:
When working on this assignment I was unsure of whether or not I was meeting the exact guidelines of creating a random walker with dynamic probabilities, while also having it walk through the RGB space, however I attempted to work on it to the best of my abilities. For the future I would want to experiment with ways that could combine both prompts together rather than having them in an if statement. This was not something I was able to accomplish as I have not yet grappled the concept of moving through RGB or HSB spaces, but I believe it is certainly possible to accomplish both prompts simultaneously and I plan on hopefully returning to update this code using a different approach.
Below is the editor link for reference:
https://editor.p5js.org/dhabialhosani/sketches/08pvhUyNH