Yesterday I decided to play with some genetic programming. Though I found a neat GP resource, I decided to work from scratch and build a simulated tide-pool with algae/plants and animals of indeterminate form. Truth be told, I’m not even sure what I did really “counts” as genetic programming because the only evolved feature is the behavior for the animals. Regardless, I wrote the thing in a single day and got some neat emergent behavior and a screen-saver-wannabe. Green dots are “plants” and yellow/white/red/black are “animals”.

The code and runnable Jar are here. Everything is public domain, though I humbly request you don’t try to pass the work off as your own. The pulsing brightness is supposed to be day & night. The source code is really sloppy, so keep in mind that this was a quick, shoot-from-the-hip sort of project and please have forgiveness.

Controls:
Minus/Underline = Slower
Plus/Equals = Faster