todd

...open to speculation...

I was this close to adding noise and blurring these images after the fact...may very likely still do such a thing...

(Red Eye Right)

Balanced Breakfast

Working away at testing how smart L-Systems can be...this applet is admittedly esoteric, but a trained eye might see a lot of potential with the dynamics going on. Warning, though, it's veeery rough around the edges.

There's still a bug or two (hence a few fudge factors in the code), but the L-System "branches" act like a circulatory system, transfering tokens they dredge up and passing them down the tree. In this case the tokens represent colors, and each node will take a certain amount of coloration locally as well as recieving color info from their parent nodes.

You control one of these L-creatures...it's bodily behavior will depend on where it is in the world.

Again, be sure to click on the applet to "focus" it.

W/S = Forward, reverse tree
A/D = Rotate left and right

Click on tiles to change their color. Color changes the form of the creature like so:

Red = Faster rotational movement
Blue = Curls nodes more
Green = Longer branches

Balanced Breakfast

Here's a simpler, easier to follow version, where the creature simply turns the color of the tile it's drinking from, kinda like a flamingo.

Balanced Breakfast Simple

Color information will stay in a node for a while, but fade away quickly if there isn't any nourishment. You can tell the state of a given node by looking at its current color (all white = all colors present, yellow = red and green present, etc.) if you're quick you can see the color info trickle through the creature's body.

While I'm using a creature for these tests (part of this is research for Darwin At Home), I also plan on using it to build smarter structures for "Here Be Dragons"...the cities and buildings won't be flailing about, tokens as well as local and global tropism should prove interesting in building a dynamic citylike environment...