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Evolution — Emergent Artificial Life
Particles self-assemble into organisms through attraction forces. Once bonded into clusters, organs take over: eyes see, thrusters propel, mouths suck in and eat. Clusters that can’t find food starve, decay, and die. No behavior is scripted — everything emerges from simple rules.
Particle Types
Body — Fleshy structural cells. The backbone of every organism. Each body cell adds 30 max energy storage. Wobble and internal organelles are visible. Dims when low on energy.
Eye — Scans a 120° cone ahead for all particle types. Each type is weighted by an evolvable vision response — positive weights attract, negative repel. Eyes open when seeing and close when idle. Pupil dilates when targets are spotted. Blinks periodically.
Thruster — Organic flagella that propels the cluster. Fires only when bonded into a cluster and aligned with the direction eyes are looking. Thrust force degrades with health. Costs energy to fire.
Mouth — Generates directional suction in a 120° frontal cone, pulling nearby food and loose particles toward itself. Consumes food and loose particles within close range and the frontal arc. The throat opens during suction and eating. Glows blue when sucking, green when consuming.
Food — Small glowing green dots. Worth 18 energy when consumed. Respawns when eaten — 50% near other food (creating natural patches), 50% at a random location. 200 food particles in the world at all times.
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Bonding
Particles that stay within 30 units for 40 consecutive frames form a persistent bond. Bonds are visible as curved lines between particles.
New bonds are thin, faint pink, and wobbly
Mature bonds are thicker, warm amber, and straighter
Bonds strengthen when both particles actively contribute to the cluster (eyes seeing, mouths eating, thrusters firing)
Bonds weaken when particles are idle passengers
Bonds snap if stretched beyond 55 units
No artificial cap on bonds per particle — geometry is the natural limit
Clusters & Organisms
Three or more bonded particles form a cluster — a functional organism. Only particles in clusters activate their abilities. Isolated particles drift passively.
Energy: Clusters spend energy to exist, see, and move. Idle cost scales with size × √size (bigger = hungrier). Thrust cost scales with cluster mass. Vision drains energy proportional to what’s visible. Energy capacity scales with body cell count.
Starvation: When energy runs out, bonds gradually weaken and dissolve. Depleted particles lose attraction force and drift apart naturally. They slowly regenerate energy and can re-bond once recovered.
Assembly: Clusters form through the attraction matrix alone — no scripted recruitment. Particles naturally aggregate based on type affinities, and energy levels determine whether bonds can form.
Dissolution: Starving clusters don’t shatter — idle particles lose bond strength locally while active ones hold on. The shape of death depends on the shape of function.
Energy & Emergence
All behavior emerges from energy dynamics:
Energy-scaled attraction — Particles with low energy exert weaker attraction forces. Depleted particles naturally drift apart without any scripted behavior.
Local bond dynamics — Each particle’s bonds strengthen or weaken based on its own activity (eating, seeing, thrusting). Well-connected structural particles get a bonus. Idle passengers weaken and shed.
Passive regeneration — All non-food particles slowly regenerate energy (+0.002/frame up to 5), allowing rebirth after starvation.
Brownian motion — All unclustered particles receive tiny random nudges, keeping the world from going inert. No type gets special treatment.
Mouth suction — Mouths generate a directional pull force within their frontal cone that draws in food and loose particles. Suction strength and range are evolvable.
Directional feeding — Mouths can only eat within a frontal arc. Body arrangement determines which direction a mouth faces, making spatial structure matter.
Powered reorientation — Bonded eyes and mouths can gradually rotate their facing direction. Eyes drift toward the cluster’s desire direction; mouths drift toward the approach vector. Rate scales with energy — starving clusters can’t steer.
No food magnetism — Food-organism attraction is capped near zero. Food must be actively pursued through vision, thrust, and correctly-oriented mouths.
Patchy food — Consumed food respawns near other food 50% of the time, creating natural resource patches that reward navigation.
Brains
A brain defines the attraction/repulsion matrix between all particle types, plus physics parameters. It determines how particles self-assemble.
Default — Hand-tuned baseline with balanced assembly
Evolved — Machine-trained. Long vision (220), strong eye response (0.46), highest suction (0.094/60). Broad foragers with strong mouth pull.