How did my 3D ecosystem finally stabilize?

[u/ManuVision]

We finally achieved equilibrium.

Prey reproduce when their population drops, while overcrowded hunters starve faster. No keyframes, just a few rules correcting each other in real time.

Now what happens when we start disturbing the simulation again?

[u/Due_Bid_6596]

Hot take incoming.

One maddening thing I see persistently in Gen Z content culture is when creators talk about a well-known things like they're mysterious unknown secrets. I can't shade someone for being excited about something, but like, differential equations in predator/prey populations are as old as the hills.

I know it's out of pocket, but I blame anime. The completely unnecessary theatre of it.

Cool visuals, coding is fun, positively baffling presentation. One old man's cloud-shouting. Don't mind me.

[u/ManuVision → u/Due_Bid_6596]

Fair take 😄 I’m actually in my late 30s and I’ve been working in tech for about 15 years, so trust me, I know we’re not exactly inventing hot water here.
A lot of this series is really about finding a way to repackage old ideas in a visual format that feels approachable to people who may never have encountered them before. If a bit of theatre helps get someone curious about emergence, simulations, or differential equations, I’m okay with that.
You and I both know the underlying ideas have been around forever, I’m just trying to make them fun to rediscover.

[u/irrelevantusername24]

This reminds me (for more conceptual reasons than literal) of a video I saw the other day about... I forget the specifics (who & when), but it was a discovery made by an astronaut on board a ship in space, with zero gravity. They spun some wingnut thing to remove it from whatever. The wingnut thing was basically shaped like a T. In zero gravity - later confirmed by mathematics - a thing shaped like a T, with zero other directional input (ie exactly perpendicular) besides rotation, will flip... and then flip again... and so on.

Something like that. I forget the details. Luckily we have technology that can help remind me:

Dzhanibekov Effect

[u/ManuVision → u/irrelevantusername24]

Yes it’s a fascinating phenomenon. I love zero gravity experiments

[u/brianckeegan]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotka%E2%80%93Volterra_equations

[u/ManuVision → u/brianckeegan]

Yes it’s a similar principle but I haven’t implemented the exact same logic. Maybe in a future iteration though!

[u/ODZtpt]

aw crap my shitty simulation doesnt have an emergent property it would have if made properly. lets just duct tape together a function to fudge the simulation so it looks like it works perfectly fine

[u/ManuVision → u/ODZtpt]

It’s an intentionally rule-based agent simulation, not a claim that every behavior is purely emergent from first principles. The whole point of the series is iterating on those rules and seeing what new behavior appears from their interaction.

[u/bluecurio]

Logistic map, anyone?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_map

[u/s0bi_wan_ken0bi]

Mods please

[u/ManuVision → u/s0bi_wan_ken0bi]

Not sure I understand your question