Assignment 3 – Insects

Concept: Mimicking Organic Patterns

For this assignment, I wanted to implement insects and add behaviors to them that would give rise to organic patterns that are found in nature. For example, slime mold exhibits fascinating patterns when searching for food.

I wanted to recreate this effect. However, I was unable to achieve this. Still, I managed to create a class-based visual that is interesting in its own way.

Process

After watching some videos on simulating ants and slime mold, I wanted to work on a similar project as I loved the results. I would play around with the visuals that I could achieve, but I wanted to create the visuals based off of movement of some insects.

I decided to create an insect class that would leave trails behind it as it moved. Initially, I wanted to create trails that would allow ants to seek out the best route to food, and back to their home. However, the logic that I implemented did not achieve this. Instead, I decided to make the trails look aesthetically pleasing and added random movement to give the insects some life-like feeling.

Code Highlights

My favorite part of the code was making the trail diffuse. Since I implemented the trail on a grid layer, all I had to do was to create weaker trails on the surrounding grid cells. The code that does this is as follows:

diffuse() {
    //if the trail  is too weak, don't diffuse
    if (this.life <= 9) {
      return;
    }
    //diffuse the trail
    let i = floor(this.x / gridSize);
    let j = floor(this.y / gridSize);
    let x = i * gridSize;
    let y = j * gridSize;

    let intensity = this.life / 4;

    //add the weaker trails to the surrounding cells

    for (let x = i - 1; x <= i + 1; x++) {
      for (let y = j - 1; y <= j + 1; y++) {
        if (x >= 0 && x < trails.length && y >= 0 && y < trails[0].length) {
          let weakerTrail = new Trail(
            x * gridSize,
            y * gridSize,
            gridSize,
            this.type,
            intensity
          );

          //add the trail  to the cell
          trails[x][y] = weakerTrail;
        }
      }
    }
    this.life = intensity;
  }

Not only do the trails fade over with time, but they spread out if they are strong enough. This is what allowed the fading away effect to emerge.

Reflection

While working on this project, I realized that I need to measure the scale of the project better beforehand. This project was a massive undertaking and so I had to give up some of my goals due to time constraints. Going forward, I need to plan the project with respect to the time frame so that I can achieve what I want to for the project.

However, I love the actual effect that was produced in the end. It reminds me of The Game of Life, and maybe my grid-based implementation for the trail markers is why such a similar effect emerged. Nonetheless, I’m happy with the way this project turned out.

Sources

Slime Mold – Audrey Dussutour

Coding Adventure: Ant and Slime Simulations – Sebastian Lague