Iterating a variable within a recursive drawing

Processing Coding Questions
1

Hi! I’m playing around with the code for Casey Reas’ Repeat: Recursion Tree ( http://formandcode.com/code-examples/repeat-recursive-tree ).

I’d like to change it so that instead of there being a 2% chance of it creating branches, it checks the position in an array and bases the decision on that. So with every level of the recursion, I want it to move to the next position in the array.

This is how I’ve tried to do it:

void draw() {
  background(255);                  
  translate(width/2, height/2);         
  seed1(dotSize, radians(270), 0, 0, 0);  
  seed1(dotSize, radians(90), 0, 0, 0);
}

void seed1(float dotSize, float angle, float x, float y, int i) {
  
  if (dotSize > 1.0) {
    
   
    if (ffs[i]==true) {  
      ellipse(x, y, dotSize, dotSize);
      float newx = x + cos(angle) * dotSize;
      float newy = y + sin(angle) * dotSize;
      int newi = i + 1;
      seed1(dotSize * 0.99, angle - angleOffsetA, newx, newy, newi);   
    }

In practice, ‘i’ moves forward one position in the array, from 0 to 1, and then stays on 1 for every level of recursion onward.

Can anyone help me with how to get better results?

1 Like
2

Can you please post a MCVE? We can’t run your code because it’s missing variable declarations and has some missing curly brackets.

Why do you think the i parameter is staying at 1? Have you tried debugging your code to see which line of code is behaving differently from what you expected?

3

I’m afraid I’ve given up on this one and don’t have the code anymore. I think my lack of understanding is so fundamental that I need to start with something more basic.