Biology Is For Squares: I Follow My Own Rules

Suddenly, I feel stupid for attempting this idea. Also, I feel like a god. This isn’t a game yet (which is why I feel stupid), but it’s actually remarkable as it is. It does a fair simulation of two species (which are generalized! I could probably add in some more without much effort – I’ll bet a 3rd would make everything unstable – perfect for a game). One is algae, which are small, fast-reproducing and photosynthesizing things. The next are… algae eaters (I’m not a biologist). They eat the algae and reproduce. They also starve though, ‘cuz they don’t know how to control their budding and can wipe out all but an epsilon of the algae in an area. Also they’re profoundly stupid and have been observered travelling in hoards towards a single piece of algae then all dying. In general, the system is about in dynamic equilibrium.

I really hope I can game-ify this (and I have the general idea), but I can’t work anymore tonight. I think that this game will be pretty different from the others I’ve made and from the others that will be submitted, and I’ll be happy with it if I can pull of the execution…

Also, I have a property called “birthRange” in my code. It makes babies go everywhere. I think that’s pretty cool.

Comments

jeffreybiles
26. Aug 2012 · 02:05 UTC
This is an awesome project! We did a non-spatial version of this in college differential equations, with foxes and rabbits. I can’t wait to see how the spatial component and the game component turn out!