Biotopes
Open populations on the mesh. Energy gathers in the ground, creatures feed, breed, starve and eat each other. There are no plants: staying put and living off what gathers where you stand is a way of living, not a kind of thing. They do have brains, and so far evolution has thrown them away. Every island runs the SAME physics and differs only in the random draw it started from, so whether they drift apart is the question this fleet exists to ask. Nothing here is a simulation of anything: the rules are about energy, and every role you can see was counted afterwards rather than assigned.
| island | state | world | tick | creatures | generations | founder lines | meat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| beam00 | live | 10 | 2082 | 830 | 91 | 1 | 22% |
| beam01 | live | 10 | 1998 | 810 | 60 | 1 | 22% |
| beam03 | live | 10 | 2062 | 847 | 71 | 1 | 21% |
- tick
- The world's own clock, not ours. One tick is one step of the physics, and these islands run about two a second.
- generations
- How many births separate the oldest living creature from the founding. Zero would mean every creature alive is one of the originals, so the world has selected nothing yet.
- founder lines
- How many of the forty starting creatures still have living descendants. Ancestry, not kind: two creatures in one line can be far less alike than two in different ones, a line can never split, and the number can only fall. Reaching one is what an asexual population does, not a fault.
- meat
- The share of what the living have eaten that came from other creatures rather than from the ground. Counted afterwards from where the energy actually came from; nothing in the rules names a predator, and there is no carnivore flag to set.
world 10 You can only eat as fast as your body allows, and that is true of meat as well: what you kill and cannot finish is left on the ground for something else to find.
the islands now
ground died here scenta creature's size is its body, its colour how fast it feeds. Every disc is drawn to the same absolute scale, so they can be read against each other.
Where they have been
One scale per row, shared by every island, because they are running identical rules and the whole reason to run more than one is to see whether they diverge. Plotted against each world's own tick, and every axis starts at zero.
creatures
beam00
values
| lowest | 188 |
| highest | 2000 |
| latest | 836 |
| ticks | 13 to 2068 |
beam01
values
| lowest | 492 |
| highest | 2000 |
| latest | 877 |
| ticks | 49 to 1985 |
beam03
values
| lowest | 146 |
| highest | 2000 |
| latest | 814 |
| ticks | 50 to 2048 |
energy in the ground
beam00
values
| lowest | 97801 |
| highest | 500000 |
| latest | 173965 |
| ticks | 13 to 2068 |
beam01
values
| lowest | 112369 |
| highest | 500000 |
| latest | 213858 |
| ticks | 49 to 1985 |
beam03
values
| lowest | 133483 |
| highest | 500000 |
| latest | 133483 |
| ticks | 50 to 2048 |
burnt as heat
the Second Law: this can only risebeam00
values
| lowest | 64563 |
| highest | 50000000 |
| latest | 30168571 |
| ticks | 13 to 2068 |
beam01
values
| lowest | 348242 |
| highest | 50000000 |
| latest | 29567860 |
| ticks | 49 to 1985 |
beam03
values
| lowest | 297338 |
| highest | 50000000 |
| latest | 30389891 |
| ticks | 50 to 2048 |
generations deep
zero means every creature alive is a founderbeam00
values
| lowest | 7 |
| highest | 100 |
| latest | 90 |
| ticks | 13 to 2068 |
beam01
values
| lowest | 15 |
| highest | 100 |
| latest | 60 |
| ticks | 49 to 1985 |
beam03
values
| lowest | 13 |
| highest | 100 |
| latest | 70 |
| ticks | 50 to 2048 |
Each island publishes counts once a second and a picture more often. The site subscribes and draws; it holds no world of its own and shares no code with the islands. What you see is the last frame that arrived.