Leafcutters is a game where you shape the actions of a leafcutting ant colony by suggesting to individual ants what they ought to do.  From these individual ants’ behaviors, the complexity of the whole colony emerges.

It’s getting there!

Wow, this semester has zoomed by. We’ve been working really hard on the ant game, and I haven’t been taking enough time to update folks on exactly what I’ve been doing. I won’t say too much right now, since the Winter (work-in-progress) Show is coming up on December 3, but here’s a quick update: • We’ve [...]

I made this sketch in two nights, as part of a general quest to find a form of game design which is comfortable enough to be a form of play in itself. As it turns out, Unity makes 3d exploration game creation into just such an activity. Play In Browser Download for Mac Download for Windows [...]

Tonight, I decided to start making an interactive version of this trap jaw ant video.

Some working pictures:

This is a light weight journal to show everyone what the deal is with my thesis! Today’s Entry:

Also, random idea encounter!

What if there were bizarre tunneling beasties who lived with the humans? And they keep on doing their thing, even when you aren’t logged in.

I just submitted my proposal for Brand New Colony, for the Fox Fellowship. Download it here.

I think the current state of video games is made of on the one hand, the big mainstream makers who evolved out of the original companies, and on the other hand people who were kids when those companies were making games. Now, we find ourselves uniquely literate in the form, and we’ve come of age [...]

Why ants? While reasearching how to get ahold of some ants as reference pets, I realized just how little I know about them. There are sites–– an entire online world of enthusiasts–– about ant keeping, and I haven’t been a part of it. So why am I pursuing this as a thesis topic? After all, [...]

Hi everyone,

I’ve just launched a shiny new personal site at http://www.bgraner.com! Hurray! Check it out for cool projects, games, and a nice look at my room.

-Bill

Spectre is a 2010 IGF Student Showcase winner! Great work, everyone!

http://games.venturebeat.com/2009/12/21/metaplace-to-shut-down-its-site-for-thousands-of-virtual-worlds/ “On Jan. 1, some 70,000 virtual worlds will vanish from the Internet. That’s because Metaplace, the company that made the open platform for the virtual worlds, will be closing its site.” Not that I’d heard of Metaplace, but I am reading Raph Koster. I just think it’s funny to read that tens of thousands [...]

I’ve never seen this done before. My friend Jim made (discovered?) a board game, and he’s financing its publication through pre-orders via KickStarter.com. If this works, it’ll be a wake up call to all of us who’ve traditionally assumed we were shut out of professional creativity due to the complications of money. Plus, it’s a [...]

The Museum did not hold up so well upon a second visit. That is, I missed the thrill of confusion that I’d first experienced in that space, and felt a nostalgia for the unhinging of certain categorizations of truth and falsehood which had marked my first encounter with the space. Now I was in on [...]

I now have a quasi-professional website at http://www.bgraner.com!

That is all.

-B

Does this make sense?

THE PROCESS OF CRITICAL THOUGHT

1. Define the subject, Dissociate from the subject

2. Consider (fictional?) alternatives

3. Form an opinion

4. Communicate that opinion

If you can get someone to do #s 1 and 2, they’re pretty well along…

-B

I created a glove controller using three bend sensors, and hooked it up to a digital Processing puppet via Arduino.

What I Used:

• Arduino

• Glove Controller: 3 bend sensors, paper, tape, velcro.

• Processing

The Source Files:

Glove_Puppet_Arduino.pde

Glove_Puppet_Processing.pde

This is some example code for communicating between Arduino and processing. It just reads a digital input pin, then changes a Processing window background color to match the input. You can use this with a switch, for instance. -Bill —ARDUINO CODE——- // This is a hyper-simple bit of code that just fires off the digital [...]