critters2

Adding pathfinding (see critters) made all the difference, and my Critters have settled into an equilibrium with ~2x the carnivores vs the herbivores. Apparently this is a a classic “Lotka-Volterra” predator-prey cycle: The carnivores are so efficient that they’ve suppressed the herbivore population.

Let me just take a moment to revel in a hobby project AI revealing some similarities with actual science.

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Anyway, this equilibrium lasted about 50 ticks before the carnivores started dying out. They couldn’t find enough herbivores to eat and/or the hunting of them was just too expensive. Add to that that breeding is still extremely rare (I’m not putting massively dense populations in place yet until the sim is a bit more mature) and, well, population collapse. The cows are doing fine.

One thing that I built into the sim early on that has bugged me is that hunger increases every tick (as does thirst) and that hunger and energy aren’t linked. In other words, a carnivore can hunt down a prey burning its energy, eat, and then be so tired it has to rest, during which time hunger ticks up. Herbivores on the other hand can just graze.

To resolve this, i’m going to add a new genetic trait and plumb it through: Metabolism. This will affect both the amount of hunger that is experienced when burning energy, and the amount of energy realised by eating.

By linking them, and by allowing resting to be “hunger-free”, I hope this will balance the advantages the herbivores have towards the carnivores just a little.

Ideas welcome, at @[email protected]