ecoSym - A 2D cellular ecosystem simulation

Live version: ecoSym

Introduction

ecoSym is a two dimension ecosystem simulation. A cellular grid forms the world and cells can be populated with various plants, herbivores and obstacles. Cells may also be blank.

Plants and herbivores have various parameters governing their life cycle, such as growth rate, spawning frequency, and probability of successful spawning. They are represented by coloured squares, green for plants and red for herbivores. The squares take on darker shades for larger (or older) life forms.

The user is able to alter the various parameters of the ecosystem, restart the world and watch the impact of their changes on how the world the world unfolds. The hope was that one or more combinations of parameters will exist that give rise to a long-term stable ecosystem. As yet, such a combination has not been found. It its way, that is also instructive.

Architecture and Technologies

ecoSym is implemented with:

• A Model and View architecture
• The Model is implemenVanilla JavaScript.
• The View is accomplished with HTML and CSS for rendering the playing field with (mostly) Vanilla JavaScript to effect the CSS updates.
• jQuery is used in a couple of places; this will be eliminated.
• webpack to bundle and serve the various scripts

There are several scripts involved in this project, including:

• lifeform.js: Provides BaseClass logic common to Plants and Herbivores.
• plant.js: Provide a Plant class wherein all Plant-specific logic is be defined
• herbivore.js: Provides a Herbivore class wherein all Herbivore-specific logic is be defined
• world.js: Handles creating and updating the two dimensional grid world
• cell.js: Provide a class for the cells of the grid world. These cells will store their co-ordinates, immediate neighbours, and contents. Storing the immediate neighbours will allow these relationships to be computed a single time and the LifeForms in the cell will be able to use that information.

Future Directions

• Additional parameters and attributes may be added to plants and herbivores.
• A more interesting, but more involved addition would be carnivores.
• At present, Herbivores need to consume Plants, lest they starve. Plants could themselves be made dependent upon Herbivores for fertilizer.