EXP 2: Week 3: Research Continued...

Entity Attachment and Detachment – Experimentation One:

Within this week’s lab class I began discussing with the tutor Vinh Nguyen my porosity lens concept in terms of having numerous entity’s in a large cube formation which independently attach and detach from each other as the surface of the main cube rotates. He suggested I start looking into the ‘Entity: AttachChild” and “Entity: DetachThis” flow graph nodes. After playing around with these nodes on a few basic cubes I came up with the following flow graph which allowed me to attach and detach the cubes upon a single key press input.

Basically this works very simply, the key input triggers the attachment function of the Entity: AttachChild node when pressed, which sources the child from the Entity: EntityId node, attaching the two. Upon the release of the defined key, the Entity: DetachThis is triggered, detaching the two entities. It is important to note that I discovered that for this particular application I am required to ensure the ‘Keep Transform’ on both the Entity: AttachChild and Entity: DetachThis is set to true, hence 1. I feel as though through planning the layout of the attachment and detachment management system I may be able to very easily use the flow graph above to control all the attachments and detachments within my porosity lens documentary.

Entity Attachment and Detachment – Experimentation Two:

Through some research on the internet regarding the attachment and detachment of various entities I discovered the system of organisation with the Crysis Sandbox 2 editor in the form of parent/child linking. The most appealing part of this discovery is the manner in which one is able to attach numerous entities together without having to use a flow graph. However as a resultant one is unable to detach the attached entities once attached within the game, meaning I would not be able to interact with my environment within one continuous motion. Therefore unless I am able to find a manner in which I can disable parent/child linking within game mode, I will stop researching this technique. The image below presents the manner in which this notion works.

Interactive Environments Within Popular Culture - Mars Bar Commercial

Upon watching television I noticed a new commercial for Mars Bars which presents a prime example of an interactive environment as the protagonist directly influences lights within his environment as he gains energy from eating a mars bar. It was rather interesting in terms of the way in which lights had been used to define the resultant of eating the Mars Bar as it alluded to the path of the man as a secondary state. Such made me consider a similar notion in terms of my own porosity lens through the notion that my protagonists environment may not interact due to his movements but rather his purpose. I have included the video beneath to portray this concept.