When you pull out the first point of a curve, it's oriented backwards. Here's what I see when I click on the left point of the circle, drag the curve handle upwards, release, and move the cursor to the second point: http://imgur.com/zw20Ig4
I get the same behavior on the next exercise (the heart), as well.
Also I feel that you are giving exactly enough points to do a nicely editable shape, and then asking them to do it in less by having the score mechanic. I'm at the face now, and every preceding image has been done with exactly the amount of points allocated when I follow my usual rules of point placement. I feel like you're teaching people to make hard-to-edit images by asking them to use less points.
(Said rules:
1. Pull curve handles out to about 1/3 of the length of the line they control.
2. Never turn more than 90º between two control points.
3. Avoid S-curves between two points.)
OSX 10.9.4, Safari. And fourteen years using Illustrator as my main artistic medium.
Edit. I stopped at the swooshy S when you asked me to try and make it with about 3/4 as many points as I would consider to be the minimum for a nice, controllable path. I feel you are teaching people bad form.
(To make a programming analogy: think of the difference between ultra-compact, hyper-idiomatic Perl code with single-letter variables and nicely-commented code with informative variable names - the Perl may be smaller, but it takes a lot more effort to go back and read when you need to change something.)
I could not even get through the first tutorial stage. What did any of the cursor things mean? I kept clicking , but the colors turned from peach to green to purple only, nothing else happened. What is this supposed to teach again? A better tutorial is needed for sure. This was 'clever' but too clever for me to use.
Not sure if considered bug or "feature" but after first level, on levels that require you to go to your starting point, i.e.: draw a heart or circle, you can click on your starting point again, winning the level with all your nodes remaining. This can be used to skip levels.
Solid game, I got 11. I just wish there was a way to edit nodes - it's really annoying to try to guess what the curve will look like when moving an unlinked node (like in the heart example). I can see that being part of the game though, I definitely got better at it by the end.
Key in getting adept at bézier curves is guessing the form of the curve in advance, this is why curves can't be modified (otherwise it's just better to practice tracing in your favorite design tool).
To be honest I found the way nodes were restricted in the UI an odd choice, coming from both how Photoshop and Illustrator handle node editing. The game's goal appears to be a friendly way of teaching such concepts yet it limits the user's interaction/experimentation with them.
Being able to manipulate the control points after adding them, at least in angle and creating cusp points would make understanding them easier I feel. At least some initial interactive demo node for the user to play around with.
Yep, that's something that's always frustrated me using the pen tool and I had no idea about the Alt thing either.
Great stuff. I've taught and watched people struggle to learn how to use the pen tool… it seems to be very unintuitive at first. A walkthrough using something like this would be a great tool for learning.
Also, I wouldn't have known to try that Alt trick had it not been for this parent comment. I'd recommend words instead of symbols for Alt and Shift at the top, and probably written instructions for the tutorial levels.
Upon reflection, I think the issue is that I can't hit the OS X "alt" key on my traditional keyboard. I can't risk changing the mapping in software though, because then some other shortcut in another program will break.
For me, the issue is this: the direction that you drag when you're doing your first anchor point is the opposite of the direction that it should be. You're dragging away from the direction you want it to curve, rather than towards it. But for every anchor point other than the first one, you're dragging towards it.
Author here. That's the way Adobe Illustrator thinks Bézier curves should work, unfortunately. I have no idea why,I chose to follow their lead because the purpose is learning how to use a tool. Still on the fence on this one, I even had to go out of my way to implement it.
No, for the first point, you are doing it exactly the opposite of the way Illustrator does it. In Illustrator, you click for your starting point, and you drag in the direction you want the curve to go. In yours, you click for your starting point, and drag in the opposite direction.
Awesome idea, but unfortunately unplayable. The first point is oriented backwards, as many pointed out here. Pressing Alt is constantly popping/hiding Firefox's main menu, shifting the display up and down.
Seems on the loop levels that clicking once or twice on the start position clears the level, or I don't understand what is happening (which is possible...)
I get the same behavior on the next exercise (the heart), as well.
Also I feel that you are giving exactly enough points to do a nicely editable shape, and then asking them to do it in less by having the score mechanic. I'm at the face now, and every preceding image has been done with exactly the amount of points allocated when I follow my usual rules of point placement. I feel like you're teaching people to make hard-to-edit images by asking them to use less points.
(Said rules: 1. Pull curve handles out to about 1/3 of the length of the line they control. 2. Never turn more than 90º between two control points. 3. Avoid S-curves between two points.)
OSX 10.9.4, Safari. And fourteen years using Illustrator as my main artistic medium.
Edit. I stopped at the swooshy S when you asked me to try and make it with about 3/4 as many points as I would consider to be the minimum for a nice, controllable path. I feel you are teaching people bad form.
(To make a programming analogy: think of the difference between ultra-compact, hyper-idiomatic Perl code with single-letter variables and nicely-commented code with informative variable names - the Perl may be smaller, but it takes a lot more effort to go back and read when you need to change something.)