While messing around with the Tablet SDK, I for some reason kept thinking what it would look like if as you wrote, your ink just sort of 'flopped' and fell as though it couldn't hold onto the screen any more. Now considering that Ink already has that handy matrix tranformation system this seemed a really easy effect to create (and I was right, it didn't take long at all). The result is 'Lazy Ink', which lets any ink you have drawn 'hang' from the last point in the stroke and swing around until it finally balances itself out. To picture this imagine you have stuck up one of those letters people put on their houses and only put in the last screw; as you let go of the letter it will swing back and forth on that screw and then finally stop once it has run out of energy. This is exactly what Lazy Ink does.

Despite this being a very silly idea, what I hope is that people will put it into their other applications. For instance in a child's learning game (such as MathPractise), if the child enters the wrong answer the letters could sort of 'flop' down as if they were sad. Or I personally would love to see some professional programmer put this into his code, tell his boss to use the app, and get all shocked and say the boss 'broke the ink' when the text starts hanging down. And of course right now I'm actually using fake physics to make the ink look like it's hanging down, but if anyone had the time they could impliment a full 'rope physics' simulation so that the entire stroke acted as a pieces of string and unraveled as it fell.

Downloads

Give me a yell if you have any questions/complaints. lewey@lewcid.com

More Of My Tablet PC Applications...