Coding Adventure: Simulating an Ecosystem

In this coding adventure I attempt to simulate a simple ecosystem. Will the foxes and rabbits get along? Probably not...

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This video was inspired by Primer's series on evolution. I highly recommend taking a look!

Source code:
The source for this video is a total mess, which I don't really want to share!

[Sulfrix_]

4:14 "So i made something that hopefully looks at least a little bit like a fox"
*shows a beautiful low poly fox model*

[Vohasiiv]

Shouldn't the foxes also have thirst and only eat if they need to? It might be more stable if they have other things to think about than to kill everything in sight

[preddy]

In the quest for a perfect simulation the more variables you add, the more you realize there are more variables to add.

[mustafazemin]

The worst part of this video is that it ends

[thelnlytramp]

The foxes should hunt only when they are hungry, the foxes should also need to drink water as well.

[unity]

Great video Sebastian! Super interesting use of Unity! - Matt

[mikaxms]

I think the foxes kill all of the rabbits, because of balancing issues. The foxes should reproduce slower and take longer before they are hungry, resulting in more rabbits per fox. The foxes also don't have any preditors, so the growth is only controlled by the survival meters. Also can the animals die of old age?

[leeroyjenkns]

Foxes: **Eat rabbits**
Rabbits: **Die**
Foxes: (・□ ・)

[bira]

god: But unfortunately i wasn't gonna let him have such an easy life.

[juicemister]

The concept you touch on at 6:16 is interesting, and there’s actually a similar situation in real-world ecology! In the wild, it’s common for prey animals to re-establish from areas called “refuges, ”which predators can’t access easily. This usually occurs after predator populations decrease and is partly responsible for boom and bust reproductive cycles like the ones you saw in your simulation. If you want to play with this model more, you might wall off a couple of areas to foxes and see what that does.

[stealthy]

*Deploys foxed that can instantly kill a rabbit and never stop eating until everything is dead*


Ecosystem!

[sausytime]

Reminds me of Thin Matrix's project Equilinox.

[QuestionMark]

"Which I hope looks a little bit like a fox." Dude your modeling skills are pretty good no need to flex on us like that...😂

[jcfiggy]

1:15

Rabbit: “searching for mate”
Later: “mating”
Later: “SeArChInG fOr MaTe”

[MrJimbo]

I know this is 3 years old now, but I really want a part 2 please.

[RenbeOfficial]

one reason why the foxes dominate is that there's no rest mechanic. in real life apex predators have to expand markedly more energy to acquire their food and generally run their bodies. this is why lions, for example, spend most of their time resting. they preserve their energy so they can hunt successfully.

if the foxes need to rest for a time after a certain amount of kills then the rabbit population would have time to recover. one way to do this organically would be to give the foxes an exhaustion meter and allow them to hunt until said meter has run out, then have them rest for a while to get it back up to a certain point before being able to hunt again.

you can create more genes around this mechanic. so some generations of foxes would be able to expend energy more efficiently, lower the threshold required for hunting, or speed up their energy recovery!

[RobertMilesAI]

You and SethBling both doing this kind of thing!
And yeah, getting predator/prey simulations to be stable usually needs much larger populations

[SebastianLague]

Hello everyone! Thanks for all the great suggestions so far on how to balance the system, and where to take it in the future. Will definitely work on an updated version sometime!

Just want to clear up something I inexplicably failed to mention in the video, which is that foxes do have their own hunger/thirst/etc properties, so they’re not just constantly hunting as it appears from the little clip I showed. They do also have longer reproductive cycles, get hungry less quickly than rabbits, and die from old age.

[samllyn]

"if she rejects him he'll add her to his mental list of unimpressed females and wont approach her again"
good guy rabbit
"until he's forgotten about it a little while later"
typical guy rabbit

[sheditz]

bunnies: jump up and down
youtube: DEMONETIZED FOR SEXUAL CONTENT