This is what I put for @ScratchGirlGamersis 's art contest.
Click "See inside" --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you don't know what Boids are, well boids an artificial life program that simulates the flocking and swarming behavior of animals like birds and fish. Developed by Craig Reynolds in 1986, the term is a shortened version of "bird-oid object". It revolutionized computer animation by demonstrating how complex, organic group movements can emerge from simple, individualized rules.Instead of scripting an entire flock's trajectory globally, the Boids simulation calculates the movement of each individual autonomous agent locally. Each boid evaluates its immediate surroundings independently, restricted by its own simulated visual range and protected radius. No single boid oversees the entire flock's formation.The algorithm relies entirely on three core behavioral rules. First, separation commands a boid to steer away from nearby agents to avoid crowding and collisions. Second, alignment forces the boid to adjust its velocity and orientation to match the average heading of its neighbors. Third, cohesion attracts the boid toward the center of mass of the local group, preventing individuals from straying.When all simulated agents process these three rules continuously, stunning emergent behavior takes shape. The group splits, reforms, and moves fluidly like a natural starling murmuration or school of fish. The entire formation acts as a unified, intelligent-looking entity without any top-down orchestration.Today, the Boids framework is widely applied across various industries for procedural animation and artificial life studies. It is frequently used in video games to control schooling fish or swarming enemies, and in Hollywood films to generate massive, realistic crowds or creature swarms. Its principles are even applied in robotics and drone swarm programming.
