ashirviskas / crabers

Craber Evolution Simulation

Overview

This project is a physics-based simulation developed in Bevy, focused on the evolution of virtual creatures called "crabers". These crabers live in a 2D space and evolve over time through natural selection and genetic mutation.

Run it now in your browser: Here

Getting Started

Prerequisites

1. Have rust and cargo installed.
2. Clone the repo.

Building and running the game from source

Running locally:

1. Run cargo run --release in the root directory.

Running in a browser:

1. Run rustup target install wasm32-unknown-unknown to install the wasm target.
2. Run cargo install wasm-server-runner to install the wasm server runner.
3. Run cargo run --target wasm32-unknown-unknown --release to build the wasm build.

Building a WASM build:

1. Run cargo build --release --target wasm32-unknown-unknown to build the wasm build.
2. Run wasm-bindgen --out-dir ./out/ --target web ./target/ to generate the wasm bindings.
3. Copy the index.html to the out/ directory.
4. Run some kind of web server in the out/ directory. I use python3 -m http.server.

Running the wasm build

Features roadmap

• Evolution: Crabers evolve over time through natural selection and genetic mutation.
• Neural Brain: Crabers have a dynamic neural structure for their brains, evolving connections over generations.
• Genetic Traits: Each craber has DNA defining basic characteristics like color, size, and maturity factors.
• Physics-Based Movement: Crabers can move forward/backward and strafe left/right in a fluid medium with drag. They can also turn or steer.
• Sensory Inputs: Include relative speed, angle to nearest food, angle to nearest organism, genetic closeness, pheromone sense, current energy level, and health.
• Reproduction: Crabers reproduce asexually upon reaching maturity and having sufficient energy. Offspring may have mutations.
• Food Sources: Random blobs of "food" spawn in the environment.
• Pheromone System: An experimental feature for inter-craber communication and interaction.
• Horizontal Gene Transfer: Crabers can transfer genetic information to other crabers through a "gene transfer" action that might happen if both parties are willing and bump into each other [TBD].

PoC TODO

• Basic movement and collision physics for crabers.
• Simple genetic system for craber traits.
• Initial implementation of the neural brain with predefined inputs and outputs
  • Inputs:
    • Relative speed
    • Angle to nearest food
    • Angle to nearest organism
    • Genetic closeness
    • Current energy level
    • Health
  • Outputs:
    • Forward/backward acceleration
    • Left/right acceleration
    • Rotational acceleration (turning/steering)
• Basic environment setup with food source spawning.
• Basic growing and maturity system for crabers.
• Simple reproduction mechanics without advanced features.
• Cleanup and do all code TODOs.

Nice to haves:

• WASM Build

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please read CONTRIBUTING.md for details on our code of conduct, and the process for submitting pull requests to us. TBD

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE.md file for details.

Acknowledgments

• Bevy Engine: For providing the game engine.
• Contributors: Everyone who has contributed to the project.