Virtual Ecosystem

Watch a virtual ecosystem grow and take shape in a little fish tank! Swim around among your creatures and tip the balance, or just enjoy the little population & genetics simulation!

This Virtual Ecosystem has several different types of organisms that grow in the "fish-tank" like environment. Populations will grow, migrate, and differentiate over time!

• Plants - Grow in size over time. Will over time spread and grow into local clusters. Sometimes it spawns spores [local, or long-distance] which will travel some distance to plant new clusters.
• Animals: Require food to grow and survive! Eventually will grow old, and die.
  • Herbivores - Roam around to feed on plants. Reproduces based on size, and relative safety from carnivores. Will flee from carnivores. 
  • Viral Carnivores - Reproduces through hunting of herbivores which are smaller than itself. If it's target is larger, it will shrink the prey to weaken it for other carnivores to assimilate it. 
  • Players: Can be controlled with WASD and Arrow Keys to wreck havoc onto your poor ecosystem. Up toggles "swimming".  Down will spawn offspring if big enough, and they can be controlled. Eats anything smaller than it, but will be weakened by carnivores.

Each "Animal" is labeled by generation, and will inherit the color of it's parent from the previous generation, with some probability of evolving different color mutations. 

If the animal's color is similar enough to the background color, it may have a higher chance of avoiding detection from either prey or predators.

Dev Note: This was created a few years ago as a fun little side project, and I decided to publish it once I found it on my computer again!

*PRESS ENTER to toggle Creature Spawning/Begin the Simulation.

*HOLD R to Reset. *Hold ESCAPE to Exit. *B = Change Background color.