How to read the simulation
Nothing here is scripted. You’re watching energy, age, and selection act on a population of genomes — this page is just the legend for what’s on screen and the dials you can turn while it runs.
Genome traits
- SPEED
- Faster movement, higher metabolic cost.
- SIZE
- Bigger eat radius and food access, slower and costlier.
- VISION
- Sees food and predators from farther away.
- EFFICIENCY
- Extracts more energy per meal.
- FERTILITY
- Reproduces sooner and more often.
Reading an organism
- hue
- Five maximally-separated colors, one per trait. The color mutes toward grey as an organism gets less specialized.
- halo style
- Solid, dotted, dashed, double, or thick border — a second, non-chromatic cue for the same dominant trait.
- size
- Drawn radius tracks the SIZE trait; predators read larger and warmer than prey.
Food kinds
- small
- Common, low energy.
- lean
- Rewards energy-efficient genomes.
- rich
- High energy, rewards vision/speed.
- dense
- Highest energy, needs a large eat radius.
Controls — mouse
- drag
- Pan the view.
- scroll
- Zoom toward the cursor.
- click
- Select an organism to inspect its genome and brain.
- speed bar
- 0.25×–4× run rate, or MAX to fast-forward under a frame budget.
Controls — keyboard
- ↑ ↓ ← →
- Pan the viewport.
- + / −
- Zoom in and out.
- N / P
- Cycle to the next / previous organism, centering on it.
- Esc
- Clear the current selection.
Lab parameters
- populations
- Initial and max prey, starting predators — the carrying capacity the cycle settles under.
- food
- Initial amount, cap, spawn rate, and per-kind weight / energy / radius profiles.
- mutation
- Per-gene mutation rate driving how fast lineages drift.
- energy
- Starting energy, decay per tick, and the base reproduction threshold.
- allow extinct
- Removes the anti-extinction floors so a population can actually collapse. Toggle, then APPLY + RESTART.
- seed
- Fix it for a bit-for-bit reproducible run, or leave it AUTO for a fresh world.
Reading the stats panel
The panel on the right is the instrument readout — every number is measured off the live world, not configured. Click a metric tab or any underlined row to plot it on the scope.
Population / time
- NOW / AVG / PEAK
- Current, windowed-average, and all-time-peak population, in the cards above the scope.
- scope tabs
- Plot one metric over the last 32 samples — POP, PRD (predators), FIT, NRG, AGE, MAX. Any underlined readout below also graphs itself when clicked.
- MIN / MAX / Δ
- Range of the plotted window and the latest change: RISING, FALLING, or STABLE.
- BIRTHS / DEATHS
- Births vs deaths in the recent window, with the net.
- ECO STATE
- The current telemetry phrase plus a one-line ecosystem description (see Telemetry states).
Simulation
- CURRENT POP
- Living prey right now.
- PEAK POP
- Highest prey population reached this run.
- GENERATION
- Deepest ancestral generation reached — offspring increment their parent’s.
- ELAPSED
- Simulation time in seconds (sim time, not wall-clock — it scales with speed).
- BIRTHS / DEATHS
- Cumulative totals since the run started.
- AVG FITNESS
- “Fitness” here is an observation, not an input — the mean of each prey’s accumulated energy/survival over its life. Nothing breeds the top scorer; it just tracks how the population is doing.
- AVG / MAX AGE
- Mean and oldest current age, in ticks.
- AVG ENERGY
- Mean energy reserve of living prey.
- MUTATIONS
- Cumulative mutation events applied at birth.
Predators
- PREDATORS
- Living predators right now.
- PRED PEAK
- Highest predator population this run.
- PRED BIRTHS / DEATHS
- Cumulative predator totals.
- PRED NET
- Recent predator births minus deaths.
- PRED FITNESS
- Mean accumulated fitness across predators — same observational caveat as prey.
- PREDATIONS
- Cumulative successful hunts.
- PRED RECENT
- Hunts in the recent window.
Genome pool
- POPULATION BIAS
- The dominant trait profile of the prey gene pool (e.g. speed-leaning vs balanced/mixed).
- BIAS SHIFT
- Whether that bias is holding or drifting, given current diversity.
- SPECIALIZATION
- How specialized vs mixed the dominant profile is.
- VARIANTS
- Count of distinct prey genomes alive.
- DIVERSITY
- Genetic spread — RMS standard deviation of traits across the prey population. 0 means clones.
- AVG SPD…SIZ
- Population mean of each genome trait (speed, vision, efficiency, reproduction, size), each in [0,1].
Ecosystem
- CURRENT STATE
- The ecosystem descriptor, e.g. “stable equilibrium” or “ecosystem collapsed”.
- RECENT NET
- Births minus deaths in the recent window — the short-term population trend.
- CRITICAL ENERGY
- Prey currently starving (below a quarter of their max energy).
- RESOURCE PRESSURE
- Composite scarcity index, 0–100%: blends the share of starving prey with how empty the food field is.
- FOOD COVERAGE
- Current food as a fraction of the food cap.
Resource types
A per-food-kind table — one row each for small, lean, rich, dense:
- LIVE
- Uneaten food of this kind on the map.
- RCNT
- Eaten in the recent window.
- EATEN
- Cumulative eaten this run.
- NRG
- Cumulative energy delivered by this kind.
Environment
A read-only echo of the config the current run started with — SEED, WORLD size, MUT RATE, INIT POP, INIT / MAX FOOD, E DECAY, INIT ENERGY, REPRO BASE, and TEMP. Change any of them in Lab parameters, then APPLY + RESTART to start a new run with them.
Telemetry states
- GROWTH PHASE
- Births clearly outpacing deaths.
- STABILITY
- Births and deaths roughly balanced.
- DIE-OFF
- Deaths outpacing births.
- MUTATION RESCUE
- Low diversity triggering a mutation-rate boost.
- EXTINCTION RISK
- Resource pressure critically high.
- EXTINCTION
- No organisms remain.