Sunday, August 10, 2014

Cecilia's Drawing Toy: now with eraser

Made a few tweaks to Cecilia's Drawing Toy today:

  • I learned that the gravity sensor is actually a lot more rare than I'd anticipated, so I tuned the code to use but not rely on either the gravity or accelerometer sensors (when they're missing, you don't get "hold upside down and shake to erase," but the toy still works). Toy is now usable on an additional 4,000-some-odd devices.
  • Since users without shake-to-erase would be lacking an erase option, I added a good old-fashioned eraser tool. Additional tools (paint bucket, undo, multiple layers with arithmetic overlay masking transform blending using Porter-Duff algorithms) to be added in subsequent releases, on an undisclosed, indeterminate, and really quite imaginary schedule.


Cecilia and her family are actually in town, so I got a chance to see her try it out. She did good; that's a quality "F" in there! Not bad for a 1-year-old.