Challenge suggestion: rotating procedural magic circles (with random text!)

[Marethyu6]

Hi everyone,

as for the title, my challenge suggestion consists in writing a code (p5.js and much else?) to generate rotating procedural magic circles, where for "magic circles" I mean something ranging between Full Metal Alchemist alchemic circles to any magical summon glyph as well as Doctor Strange mystic arts.

Within the Coding Train Challenges I've found the 54 Islamic Star Patterns and the 155 Kaleidoscope Snowflake ones to have similarities and being potential starting points, while on the web I've found this generator of static alchemic circles and one animated proof of concept built after it though without the actual generation of patterns.

However what's lacking in those examples, for which I challenge The Coding Train, it is to build all features together to end up having a working procedural patterns animation. Possibly I'd add to this some colour changes, glowing effects, and moreover (because otherwise it wouldn't be much of a challenge I guess) symbols and sentences in ancient-script-like language (like Aramaic) running along lines, to be randomly pulled out from some license-free text, to fit the generated geometries and complete the mystic feeling!

If Dan even manages to make circles fade into one another after a while, it would serve as a great screen-saver: is it not worth the challenge? ;D

A fellow choo'choo-er

[Fuze314]

i will try it

[Marethyu6]

i will try it

Well thank you then and please tell me if you have any success! Maybe we could also find a way to get Dan's attention on this if it becomes a community challenge ;D

[Fuze314]

Well thank you then and please tell me if you have any success! Maybe we could also find a way to get Dan's attention on this if it becomes a community challenge ;D

I don't have much knowledge about how to manage data about different shapes connected to each other, so I've divided the patterns in 3 sections, I've also managed to calculate different shapes fitted into each other.

[Marethyu6]

It looks great! Are any of the links I provided before proving useful? At this stage those may not be helpful, as you're still dealing with shapes, but then I thought if one actually designs the patterns with a base idea like this one >>> later the programming part of "randomization" could benefit from previously established parameters set for each shape/connection between points... like by telling the code to randomize combination between elements, while still following rules to end up having complete geometric shapes, does it make sense?

Anyway, I'm just proving conceptual suggestions, apologies... my limited programming knowledge can only go so far atm, but -hey!- you're doing great I see, hope you're enjoying the challenge at least! ;D

[Fuze314]

I'm now able to create many shapes fitted into each other

[Marethyu6]

Now that's something!! Do you mind sharing also part of the process you're making this work? Not that I'll be able to help you, but I'm pretty curious myself to get my hand dirty with code, and that might be a good way to learn something!

In any case I'm looking forward to next updates and remember you rock already by going this far ;D

[Fuze314]

Now that's something!! Do you mind sharing also part of the process you're making this work? Not that I'll be able to help you, but I'm pretty curious myself to get my hand dirty with code, and that might be a good way to learn something!

In any case I'm looking forward to next updates and remember you rock already by going this far ;D

My code is not able to generate good patterns 90% of the time. I messed up my code completely, I've tried many different ideas but none of them are good. I'm not good at coding because everything ends up having the same problem of not being able to manage the data about shapes. I need some idea to store everything in a more logical way.

[Fuze314]

[Marethyu6]

I think you shouldn't be so harsh with yourself, if it doesn't work 90% of the times you still have made a 10% right, I'm not even able to reach that!

Anyway, "not being able to manage the data about shapes. I need some idea to store everything in a more logical way.": might something like tags help? I mean as I proposed before, with "circle=water" or "square=earth" and randomizing shapes and lines creation by rules of combination between elements. I know it's a very abstract idea but I hope it could help some way...