Screensaver project - Moving or deleting drawn lines

Hi all I thought for my next project I'd move away from game dev and try some generative art on the playdate. The idea is they'll be like screen savers and I'll possibly have a clock option.

parametricLine

Most my drawing is being done using the drawing functions in the sdk. I know how to draw a rotated line using the geometry functions but is it possible to move a line once it's drawn and can I delete a line? The above was achieved by clearing the screen and that is why it flickers.

I have slowed down the creation of these drawings using playdate.wait() which I'm not sure is the best option. I just wanted users to get an idea of how the drawings were generated. Here are a few of the other drawings I have:

squareArt
fractalTree
tiledLines

And lastly I have one with a clock, because I'm deleting the circle by drawing over it with white the clock also disappears. I think I can fix this by pushing the clock to a context and displaying it as a sprite.

circles-clock

Lastly is there a way to have a white outline around drawn text? Some of the drawings contain big chunks of black and white which causes bad visibility with the clock.

1 Like

In the first animation (like Qix) you can:

  • keep track of multiple lines and draw all lines every update, using clear screen at the start of your update
  • erase old lines by drawing them in an inverting drawing mode

White outline around text: either bake into your font, or draw black font on top of custom white font.