Lu Wilson

TODEPOND TIMES: Can't Touch Fish

Added 2022-12-15 19:25:43 +0000 UTC

It's time! For the weekly...

🐟 TODEPOND TIMES 🐟

What's new this week?

Fish

I've been working hard on the next video, 📕 Define Define! Part of that has been: making a bunch of new engines/experiments.

Today I want to introduce one of those to you: Fish!

Inspired by life simulations like the Bibites, fish swim around the pond. (With an aesthetic difference: We're looking at them from the side, not the top).

These fish can do a couple of things:

🐟 They can see colours.
🐟 They can move.

And you can do one thing:

🤖 Drop things into the pond.

When fish swim through something edible (eg: food), they eat it and get a bit bigger! When they get big enough, they split into two, and their brains mutate a little bit. If they don't eat, they get smaller over time. They never disappear - they just get so tiny that you can't see them anymore...

Their brains control how they move (in response to what colours they see). What kind of fish will evolve if you only drop 'pink food' in? What kind of fish will evolve if you also drop 'blue shrinking potion' in.

Can't Touch

I've also done some work on the following video, 🎵 Arrows in Arrows in Arrows. Previously, I had a problem. Let me explain...

I'm making a new cellular automata, where lots of little arrows move around (and make music). The problem is this: How do I easily click-on & interact-with the arrows when they're moving all the time? I don't want to pause them, because that would also pause the music!

So here's my idea (inspired by the Fish). You just don't. I've been figuring out how you can interact with the cells of the cellular automata without needing to touch the cells. Instead, you can interact with the lines in between the cells to make things do what you want. These will never move, so there's no fiddly-ness involved.

Things are starting to shape up for the next two videos - which will be the first two parts of the next trilogy. I can't wait to show you more - sorry it's taking a long time, but I really hope that it'll be worth the wait. Thanks so much for supporting me and my projects! As always, I hope you have a great week :) 👉🐟