CIT 591 Assignment 12: Kaleidoscope
Fall 2014, David Matuszek

Purpose of this assignment

To present the idea of Model-View-Controller
To introduce Timers and Observer/Observable
To get you started with animation
To give you experience with typical geometric manipulations

General idea of the assignment:

A kaleidoscope is a cardboard tube you look through, often at some colored crystals, and it shows you changing colored patterns, with sixfold symmetry. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaleidoscope.) You're going to do the same in a JPanel, only (because it's a lot easier) with eightfold symmetry. That is, there will be eight copies of every visible object, in different orientations.

Details:

The math

Imagine, for the moment, that you have a JPanel with the origin in the center; that is, the center is (0,0).

We will place an object (the letters "ABC") in this JPanel, and show the various reflections that are possible.

	You can reflect the object around the X-axis. Do this by changing the sign of all `Y` values. That is, each point `(X,Y)` becomes `(X,-Y)`.
	You can reflect the object around the Y-axis. Do this by changing the sign of all `X` values. That is, each point `(X,Y)` becomes `(-X,Y)`.
	You can reflect the object around the main diagonal. Do this by changing each `(X,Y)` point into `(-Y,-X)`.
	You can reflect the object around the secondary diagonal. You can do this by changing each `(X,Y)` point into `(Y,X)`.

Some combinations of reflections are the same as other combinations of reflections; there are eight possibilities in all. Thus, if the origin were at the center, you would have, for each (X, Y) point, the following:

(X,Y) (-X,Y) (X,-Y) (-X,-Y) (Y,X) (-Y,X) (Y,-X) (-Y,-X)

Since the origin of a JPanel is not at the center, but is at the top left corner instead, you will have to make some adjustments to these. The exact values will depend on the width and height of your JPanel window. Don't use magic numbers--ask the JPanel for its height and width. (Be aware that the user could change the size of the JPanel during execution.)

Most of the figures that you draw with java.awt.Graphics methods have a width and a height as well as an x and y starting position. For some reflections, these will have to be interchanged.

Remember the DRY principle. You should be able to come up with a method or methods that you can use for any figures; this will make it easy if you decide to add a bunch more figures to your display.

The GUI

Write a JPanel to show an animated kaleidoscope. Have somewhere between three and ten figures that you draw on the screen (use Graphics.drawPolygon for at least one of them). Each of these "main" figures should be allowed to move anywhere in the window, so that often it will overlap or cross some of its reflections. Figures will "bounce" off the walls (like the "Bouncing Ball" JPanel), but it is OK if they sometimes go partly outside the walls--Java will "clip" the image to fit the JPanel. Each figure should move at a different speed.

Have buttons to start and stop the animation. In addition, have some controls so that the user can interact with the animation to at least a small extent. Some of the things you might want to control are: Speed. Colors. Number of figures. Number of reflections. Randomness of movements. Clearing and restarting. It doesn't really matter much what you do, but do something so that the user has some control; it's more interesting that way.

This is a complex program. It uses a Timer and a TimerTask, as well as an Observer and an Observable. To get you started, I have provided a basic animation program (Bouncing Ball) that you should download and modify.

Due date

Your program is due before 6am ~~Monday, December 1~~ Wednesday, December 3. The final Java assignment will be given out on Monday, December 1, so there will be some overlap between assignments.