I really like the idea of Tantalus mode. However, in my (admittedly very limited, I only have my mini running since yesterday) experience, most finished tracks I tried look better in standard Sisyphus mode. The second ball tends to mess up the work of the first. This is hardly surprising, as most of these tracks were never designed with two balls in mind.
My question for the artists is: Are there any tracks that were specifically designed to look better in Tantalus mode?
My question for the community at large: Have you come across any tracks that you found particularly pleasing in two-ball mode?
My question for Bruce and his team: Could these tracks be marked as such in the app and/or could you push out a playlist to showcase some Tantalus tracks?
It takes a while to understand Tantalus mode. Extremely easy to express mathematically - "inside out", while accurate, is not at all visually intuitive. One rule of thumb is that if you recognize the thumbnail image of a track (as an object, face, text, etc.) it will probably not look good with two balls. Flipping that: if a track is a geometric pattern, there is a good chance 2-ball mode will be interesting (and sometimes great).
Now that the bulk of our Mini campaign has been fulfilled, we will be further developing our community: WebCenter. Your request to tags tracks as good for 2-ball is already in the works and will come out soon - as will playlist suggestions. For now, my 2-ball favs include:
Tensig1, Hep, India1p, Para2b, Apache, lasso1, lasso4a, peoni1, seach5, sola3, spmrph1r, tensig2$, swirlb, traldn1, trwirl1, zowie1r$b. These are my tracks, and have been around a long time, so I am more familiar with them. I have also found many of ddkengr's tracks (the ones that look like crop circle) are cool with 2-balls - as are many other more strictly "algorithmic" tracks from our community (by goulet, heropup, slightlylooney, markyland, dithermaster, ...).
This is all pretty new stuff, and of course my take on it is my own. Looking forward to how exploration of Tantalus mode unfolds!
My question for the artists is: Are there any tracks that were specifically designed to look better in Tantalus mode?
There will be. Bruce kindly got me early access to 2-ball mode and I've been pondering this challenge ever since. My plan is to come up with some tracks where the balls interact with the sand left from the other, in a kind of a "slow dance". Stay tuned.
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