Living Plate
Put bricks on the plate. Each colour is a rule. Press Bring to life and watch the world run: water flows, plants grow, lava spreads. Then change it while it runs.
Bricks
Tap the plate to put a brick. Tap again to stack it higher (up to 4). Drag to paint.
Look around: right-drag to turn, wheel to zoom, shift-drag to slide. On a phone: two fingers to slide and zoom, or pick Look and drag.
Try a plate
Things to try
On a real plate
This is the computer version of the idea. The real one: you build with real bricks on a real baseplate, hold up a phone, and the plate comes alive on the screen, on top of your bricks. Move a brick with your hand, and the river finds a new way.
- See the plate. The phone finds the plate's four corners in the camera picture and lines up a grid of studs on it.
- Read the bricks. For every stud: is there a brick, and what colour? (Stacked bricks are read from their height in the picture, later.)
- Run the same rules. The world here is the same code: only the input changes, from taps to the camera.
- Draw on top. Water, lava, trees and fire are drawn over the camera picture in the right perspective, so they sit on your bricks.
Not built yet: the camera part (steps 1, 2 and 4). It is the first question to test with a phone and a real plate: can a phone read the colour on every stud in a normal room light? The same plate reader would also let a plate become a music sequencer or a game level.
Other prototypes: Draw a machine, build it, test it · Brick Beats, the plate is the song.