Swarm (1997/2018)

Origins

Back in 1997, whilst in university, some friends and I wrote a thing called Swarm, to simulate small creatures. It was released to Aminet and had a fair number of downloads.

I had always meant to revisit it. In 2018, I finally got around to it...

The Premise

I had only two desirable outcomes - that it worked in JavaScript, to make it available to all, and that it could be controlled with your hands. Because... well...

In 2018 I ran the Berlin marathon. This required a lot of training, determination, and sacrifice. To compensate, there was to be a mini-holiday immediately following it. One of the exhibitions was the Game Science Center. This comprised of two rooms of games, most controlled by alternative means. That is, instead of a joypad you destroy the aliens by using a ping pong table, and have to hit the balls at the display!

Over the years I have done a lot of experimental work with alternative interfaces (such as RFC, motion, magnets, etc) but one I've taken a shine to recently is the Leap Motion, which allows you to control on-screen objects by waving your hand (or hands) in the air. So, naturally, it occured to me that I should resurrect the Swarm code, and integrate it with the Leap Motion. (If you have one, otherwise, the mouse will still work.)

An example