🐜 Colony Ant Simulator

This is a program designed to simulate the behavior of ants using Python 3.

📖 Overview

• Simulation Modes: The program offers two simulation modes: "theory" and "reality." In the "reality" mode, ants consume energy, and new ants are generated if there is enough food.

• Movement and Energy: Ants move based on predefined movement patterns and have energy levels. Ants lose energy over time, and their movement is influenced by their energy.

• Ant Behavior Simulation: The program simulates the behavior of ants in an environment, where ants move around randomly, search for food, and return to the nest.

🐜 Explanation of the Ants' behaviour.

• If the scout (also refered to as an ant) discovers a food source, it returns somewhat directly to the nest, leaving a trail of pheromones on it's way

  • These pheromones attract other ants, causing them to follow the trail
  • When ants return to the nest they reinforce the trail with more pheromones.

• When two paths lead to the same food source, the shorter one is used by more scouts compared to the longer path.

  • This causes the short path to become increasingly reinforced and attractive.
  • Over time, the pheromones on the long path evaporate, causing it to disappear.
  • Eventually, ants will only use the shortest path.

⚙️ Running the Program, and Setting Parameters.

ⓘ Note
At the moment this program can't run, it seems that the current dependencies prevent the program from launching.

To Install the program, use the following command.

git clone https://github.com/riiswa/colony-ant-simulator
cd ~/colony-ant-simulator/

To launch the program, use the following command. By default, the game starts in "Theory" mode, think of it as "Arcade" mode:

python3 colony_ant_simulator.py

You can switch to "Reality" mode with the following command, think of "Reality" mode as "Realism" mode:

python3 colony_ant_simulator.py -m reality

For help with the options use the -h flag:

usage: python3 colony_ant_simulator.py [-h] [-m [{theory,reality}]] [n_ants]

Simulation of ants colony in python.

positional arguments:
  n_ants                Number of ants (recommended: 10-100; default: random number between 10 and 100)

options:
  -h, --help            Show this help message and exit
  -m [{theory,reality}] Simulation mode (default: "theory")

📸 Screenshots

The Algorithm in action:

🛠️ Prerequisites

• Python 3.11
• Coloraide, install with the command pip install coloraide
• Tkinter, install with the command sudo apt-get install python3-tk