griffpatch's Boids

Instructions

// DESCRIPTION \\ The description contains the following : HOW TO PLAY (how to play), SLIDERS (what the sliders do) and EXPLANATION (how the boids work and how you can create them too). It's a long way down, so prepare yourself ! ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) // HOW TO PLAY \\ Drive your mouse to the left edge of the screen to see all of the customization sliders (explained in the "SLIDERS" section down below). Except that, well, uh, you don't... really... play... Since the boids are all controlled by their own AI, but they will try to avoid your mouse-pointer, even though you can't really see it... // SLIDERS \\ If you drive your mouse to the left edge of the screen, you will see 6 sliders appear... These control how the boids act, so buckle up for the explanation of these sliders' fonctions ! Here goes ! - TARGET SPEED defines the maximum speed the boids an travel at. - RESOLVE defines how quickly the boids transition to their target speed after acceleratiing or slowing down. - RANGE defines how far (in pixels) the boids can "see" and interact with each other. - SEPARATION defines the amount of force the boids will have to keep themselves away from each other. - COHESION defines how much the boids will try to go to the average position of all the boids in its range. - ALIGNMENT defines how much the boids will want to go in the same direction as the boids in its range / group. ...Aaaand, phew ! That was very long to write... If you've read all of that, thank you, and GG ! Now that you know how the sliders affect the boids' behavior, you can finally start playing with them... // EXPLANATION \\ These little triangles are called boids. They are AI entities that follow 3 simple rules (explained by @griffpatch in a video linked below) : 1. Separation : "Each boid will try to keep at a safe distance from any other boids to avoid collisions." 2. Cohesion : "Yet, each boid also wants to be part of a flock, and will try to move towards the center of its local group." 3. Alignment : "Each boid wants to fly in the same general direction as the other boids around it." "From these three simple rules emerge all sorts of stunning and complex groups behaviors." These boids are just very satisfying to see. You can use this for all sorts of things, like bird or fish simpulation. To conclude this explanation, here's the lnk to the tutorial I used to make the boids : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rv1tvWTtd5M And the tutorial for the pen boid trails : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cenBN8I62FQ Hope this long explanation helps you understand a bit more what these amazing boids are !