The Nature of Code by Shiffman, Daniel -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Cover Title Dedication Copyright Acknowledgments

A.1 A little bit of history A.2 Kickstarter

Preface

P.1 What is this book? P.2 A word about Processing P.3 What do you need to know? P.4 What are you using to read this book? P.5 The “story” of this book

Part I: Inanimate objects Part II: It’s alive! Part III: Intelligence

P.6 This book as a syllabus P.7 The Ecosystem Project P.8 Where do I find the code online and submit feedback?

Table of Contents Introduction

I.1 Random Walks I.2 The Random Walker Class

Pseudo-Random Numbers

I.3 Probability and Non-Uniform Distributions I.4 A Normal Distribution of Random Numbers

Calculating Mean and Standard Deviation

I.5 A Custom Distribution of Random Numbers I.6 Perlin Noise (A Smoother Approach)

Noise Detail Mapping Noise Two-Dimensional Noise

I.7 Onward

Chapter 1. Vectors

1.1 Vectors, You Complete Me 1.2 Vectors for Processing Programmers 1.3 Vector Addition 1.4 More Vector Math

Vector subtraction Vector multiplication

1.5 Vector Magnitude 1.6 Normalizing Vectors 1.7 Vector Motion: Velocity 1.8 Vector Motion: Acceleration

Acceleration Algorithms!

1.9 Static vs. Non-Static Functions 1.10 Interactivity with Acceleration

The Ecosystem Project

Chapter 2. Forces

2.1 Forces and Newton’s Laws of Motion

Newton’s First Law Newton’s Third Law Newton’s Third Law (as seen through the eyes of Processing)

2.2 Forces and Processing—Newton’s Second Law as a Function

Newton’s Second Law

2.3 Force Accumulation 2.4 Dealing with Mass 2.5 Creating Forces 2.6 Gravity on Earth and Modeling a Force 2.7 Friction 2.8 Air and Fluid Resistance 2.9 Gravitational Attraction 2.10 Everything Attracts (or Repels) Everything

Chapter 3. Oscillation

3.1 Angles 3.2 Angular Motion 3.3 Trigonometry 3.4 Pointing in the Direction of Movement 3.5 Polar vs. Cartesian Coordinates 3.6 Oscillation Amplitude and Period 3.7 Oscillation with Angular Velocity 3.8 Waves 3.9 Trigonometry and Forces: The Pendulum 3.10 Spring Forces

Chapter 4. Particle Systems

4.1 Why We Need Particle Systems 4.2 A Single Particle 4.3 The ArrayList 4.4 The Particle System Class 4.5 A System of Systems 4.6 Inheritance and Polymorphism: An Introduction 4.7 Inheritance Basics 4.8 Particles with Inheritance 4.9 Polymorphism Basics 4.10 Particle Systems with Polymorphism 4.11 Particle Systems with Forces 4.12 Particle Systems with Repellers 4.13 Image Textures and Additive Blending

Chapter 5. Physics Libraries

5.1 What Is Box2D and When Is It Useful? 5.2 Getting Box2D in Processing 5.3 Box2D Basics

SETUP DRAW Core elements of a Box2D world:

5.4 Living in a Box2D World 5.5 Building a Box2D Body

Step 1: Define a body. Step 2: Configure the body definition. Step 3: Create the body. Step 4: Set any other conditions for the body’s starting state.

5.6 Three’s Company: Bodies and Shapes and Fixtures

Step 1: Define a shape. Step 2: Create a fixture. Step 3: Attach the shape to the body with the fixture.

5.7 Box2D and Processing: Reunited and It Feels So Good

Step 1: Add Box2D to our main program (i.e. setup() and draw()). Step 2: Link every Processing Box object with a Box2D Body object.

5.8 Fixed Box2D Objects 5.9 A Curvy Boundary

Step 1: Define a body. Step 2: Define the Shape. Step 3: Configure the Shape. Step 4: Attach the Shape to the body with a Fixture.

5.10 Complex Forms 5.11 Feeling Attached—Box2D Joints

Step 1: Make sure you have two bodies ready to go. Step 2: Define the joint. Step 3: Configure the joint’s properties. Step 4: Create the joint.

5.12 Bringing It All Back Home to Forces 5.13 Collision Events

Step 1: Contact, could you tell me what two things collided? Step 2: Fixtures, could you tell me which body you are attached to? Step 3: Bodies, could you tell me which Particles you are associated with?

5.14 A Brief Interlude—Integration Methods 5.15 Verlet Physics with toxiclibs

Getting toxiclibs Core Elements of VerletPhysics Vectors with toxiclibs Building the toxiclibs physics world

5.16 Particles and Springs in toxiclibs 5.17 Putting It All Together: A Simple Interactive Spring 5.18 Connected Systems, Part I: String 5.19 Connected Systems, Part II: Force-Directed Graph 5.20 Attraction and Repulsion Behaviors

Chapter 6. Autonomous Agents

6.1 Forces from Within 6.2 Vehicles and Steering 6.3 The Steering Force 6.4 Arriving Behavior 6.5 Your Own Desires: Desired Velocity 6.6 Flow Fields 6.7 The Dot Product 6.8 Path Following 6.9 Path Following with Multiple Segments 6.10 Complex Systems 6.11 Group Behaviors (or: Let’s not run into each other) 6.12 Combinations 6.13 Flocking 6.14 Algorithmic Efficiency (or: Why does my $@(*%! run so slowly?) 6.15 A Few Last Notes: Optimization Tricks

1) Magnitude squared (or sometimes distance squared) 2) Sine and cosine lookup tables 3) Making gajillions of unnecessary PVector objects

Chapter 7. Cellular Automata

7.1 What Is a Cellular Automaton? 7.2 Elementary Cellular Automata 7.3 How to Program an Elementary CA 7.4 Drawing an Elementary CA 7.5 Wolfram Classification 7.6 The Game of Life 7.7 Programming the Game of Life 7.8 Object-Oriented Cells 7.9 Variations of Traditional CA

Chapter 8. Fractals

8.1 What Is a Fractal? 8.2 Recursion 8.3 The Cantor Set with a Recursive Function 8.4 The Koch Curve and the ArrayList Technique 8.5 Trees 8.6 L-systems

Chapter 9. The Evolution of Code

9.1 Genetic Algorithms: Inspired by Actual Events 9.2 Why Use Genetic Algorithms? 9.3 Darwinian Natural Selection 9.4 The Genetic Algorithm, Part I: Creating a Population 9.5 The Genetic Algorithm, Part II: Selection 9.6 The Genetic Algorithm, Part III: Reproduction 9.7 Code for Creating the Population

Step 1: Initialize Population Step 2: Selection Step 3: Reproduction

9.8 Genetic Algorithms: Putting It All Together 9.9 Genetic Algorithms: Make Them Your Own

Key #1: Varying the variables Key #2: The fitness function Key #3: Genotype and Phenotype

9.10 Evolving Forces: Smart Rockets 9.11 Smart Rockets: Putting It All Together 9.12 Interactive Selection 9.13 Ecosystem Simulation

Genotype and Phenotype Selection and Reproduction

Chapter 10. Neural Networks

10.1 Artificial Neural Networks: Introduction and Application 10.2 The Perceptron 10.3 Simple Pattern Recognition Using a Perceptron 10.4 Coding the Perceptron 10.5 A Steering Perceptron 10.6 It’s a “Network,” Remember? 10.7 Neural Network Diagrams 10.8 Animating Feed Forward

The end