Justin Lloyd's Thinkering

Somebody needs to think about this stuff...

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Paper – Flocks, Herds, and Schools: A Distributed Behavioral Model

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Today I read a published paper titled “Flocks, Herds, and Schools: A Distributed Behavioral Model.”

Love this paper. Implemented a couple of neat demos on the Atari ST. Wondering if boids have any application to any games though I cannot think of anything right now.

The abstract is:
The aggregate motion of a flock of birds, a herd of land animals, or a school of fish is a beautiful and familiar part of the natural world.

But this type of complex motion is rarely seen in computer animation.

This paper explores an approach based on simulation as an alternative to scripting the paths of each bird individually.

The simulated flock is an elaboration of a particle system, with the simulated birds being the particles.

The aggregate motion of the simulated flock is created by a distributed behavioral model much like that at work in a natural flock; the birds choose their own course.

Each simulated bird is implemented as an independent actor that navigates according to its local perception of the dynamic environment, the laws of simulated physics that rule its motion, and a set of behaviors programmed into it by the “animator.”

The aggregate motion of the simulated flock is the result of the dense interaction of the relatively simple behaviors of the individual simulated birds.

Well designed marketing

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Most people mistake marketing for advertising.

“We need some marketing” they say, and envision newspaper advertisements, commercials on TV and large billboards displaying their product or service.

When in fact you can have a lot of marketing for your business without having any of those things.

Marketing is a process that happens. Advertising is a thing that is.

Similarly, most people mistake design for art or graphics or the look of a thing.

“We need a good design” they say, envisioning custom logos, a fancy paint job, or a pretty user interface.

When in fact design is really about how a thing works, and how the user interacts with that thing, than really about how the thing looks to begin with.

Design is an interface to the user experience.

Good design is a process intimately tied to the creation of the product, not something you just slap on a finished product to make it look prettier.

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