ProtoEvo

This project is an interactive simulation where single-celled "protozoa-like" entities evolve their behaviours and morphologies in order to survive and reproduce. The simulation takes place in a 2D environment with a custom physics engine. The environment consists procedurally generated rocks shown as brown-grey triangles that form rigid boundaries for cells moving around the tank fluids. The bright green cells are plants that serve as a sources of energy and mass for protozoa. These plants emit chemical pheromones that spread through the environment, and gradients of which can be detected by the protozoa. These pheromones are visualised in the screenshot and can be seen as the glowing green trails dispersed around and behind plant cells.

The primary interest of this simulation the emergence of multicellular structures, i.e. the development of coordinated groups of attached cells that incur a survival benefit by being attached. So far, by implementing cell-adhesion and allowing protozoa to share resources I have seen the emergence of some quite cool multi-cell behaviour. However, the next step is to achieve cell differentiation via the evolution of gene-regulatory networks.