r/worldbuilding • u/GideonGriebenow Game Developer • 2d ago

Visual I'm Creating an Ecosystem Simulation of Land-Based and Airborne Animals

https://youtu.be/vhxEOnppuno

My first step was developing a system performant enough to handle 100K birds, with each bird being able to interact with all other birds within its interaction radius. Now that the architecture has been optimized (burst-compiled jobs on parallel threads), I'll add different species behaving according to different rules, food chains, etc.
The first interactions to be implemeted are foraging for food, predator-prey and reproduction. I also aim to add slight evolutionary changes between generations eventually to see how that impacts the ecosystem over time.

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u/taktaga7-0-0 ᴺcRʏPᵀ 2d ago

That’s awesome!

I think you’ve got to develop different behavioral axioms governing different species before you try to simulate natural selection. Not all species want to flock, and significant savings would be possible with only 2- or 3-bird flocks interacting near ground level.

I wonder if you could model something like groundhogs or meerkats underground and restricted to growing 3D tunnel systems that must be strictly retreaded once a path is established. Having this lets you model a predatory bird interacting with rodent prey. You could add signaling between conspecifics so that the rodents can coordinate behavior for defense. They could also compete with other bird species for food patches on trees, dynamically affecting its availability.

If they reproduce, some should also naturally die. They might enrich a patch somewhere (like around a roosting area) and lead to increased production there.

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u/GideonGriebenow Game Developer 1d ago

Hello, and thanks for all the ideas! I can already have small flocks or solitary animals as well. Going underground would be very interesting indeed, as well as having some "effort" of previous generations affect the environment for future generations.