Bugs
Jeffrey LeBlanc

Description:
I'm interested in making a simuilation of "bugs" that hunt and eat and change.

So Far:
I have the above code where the bugs:

hunt food at random seeking speeds

grow once they have eaten something

lose a segment after a certain period of time if they haven't eaten

split past a certain size and pass on their color

To Do

Right now everything is set as static sized arrays which is a little awkward

This causes the eventual saturation of the screen and makes it hard to create swings in population

So I want to use ArrayLists to make the program more flexible

Also the bugs should interact with eachother. Right now they can pile on top of eachother

And currently there is nothing really genetic about any of this

My initial idea to spice this up is to have the legs with different periods determined by "genes"

This will make some hunt faster than others but there will be tradeoffs, and somehow they will be able to mate

Thinking now of how to do this

ALSO: needs user interaction, otherwise boring. Some ideas are people can control food, and corral the bugs.

In this way people can create breeds of creatures, I don't know, we'll see...

Challenges:

All the above

First implement ArrayLists

Then make the bugs interact, probably some collision detection, but based on the legs.

I think I'll code a area defined by the legs that other bugs cannot cross.

This will also let the leg size change for some bugs which could be an advantage for them yet slow them down...

Source code: bugsystem a_controls b_system c_food d_organism e_segment f_legs

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