ngdon-clock
After staring at a digital clock for an extended period of time, I began to feel that the clock was dwelled by stick-like creatures who were enslaved to work endlessly in the confined rectangle of the display. And that was my inspiration.
I considered my goals. I want it to be playful and interesting, to be something that people will stare at for time longer than they should have at a clock, yet still utilitarian like a traditional digital clock, with which people can know the time immediately after a single glance. My clock can be placed at an airport or a train station, where both a large and clear clock and something to make waiting less boring is needed.
And then I started building everything from scratch. I wrote physics for the sticks, created a system for managing and animating them, etc.
Afterwards I thought about the future of my project: These stick-like creatures will start to goof off when they assume nobody’s watching them. They will play with each other. And when the user comes back, the creatures will rush back into position.
I wrote my own physics engine for the sticks so that they behave like real sticks. In the future I might refine that engine into a separate project, perhaps called Stick2D, as an alternative to Box2D.