C++ Ants Simulation 5, Ants Fight

Multiple colonies fight for resources on the same map, trying to expand.
Windows release github.com/johnBuffer/AntSimu...
Github github.com/johnBuffer/AntSimu...
00:00 Introduction
01:02 Two colonies
03:12 Three colonies
05:52 Four colonies
08:50 Thanks for wathing

[@PezzzasWork]

Published a release for windows here (with the code) github.com/johnBuffer/AntSimulator/releases/tag/v3.1

[@szymonrylo5169]

1000 + 1000 + 1000 + 1000 = 4000

[@DakotaSsssssims]

it says its not good

[@shuriken188]

The release is fullscreen but seemingly only 1080p, which messes with my desktop since I have a 1440p monitor. Is it possible to have it run in a window, or switch to the native resolution? I'd rather not mess with the source code myself, as I've had little luck compiling C-related code for whatever reason.

[@PezzzasWork]

@@shuriken188 I've just updated the release link to add a conf file alongside the executable with configurable window size and mode

[@shuriken188]

@@PezzzasWork Awesome

[@Joseph-kd9tx]

I have an idea for a possible part 6: the ability for colonies to branch out and create more queens and therefore other colonies. This will lay the foundations of "colony reproduction", a totally other aspect to ants. I would also like to add the idea of giving the ability for corpses to be food, suggested by notus42 to give better reward for war

[@Zedryx69]

And sometimes they either start to fight, or start to form 'supercolonies', which are colonies with multiple queens.

[@vulpeszerda39]

YES

[@aurielklasovsky1435]

@@Zedryx69 in nature, this behavior is dependent on species. Most ants fight with child colonize, some ants form global colonize who rage war over several continents.

[@notus42]

Aother small possible addition: Corpses become food.

[@123TeeMee]

@@Zedryx69 Then you have team competitions not just FFAs

[@stefanobertolotti2555]

Finally, I was hoping for the project to evolve in this way, great job.

[@pvic6959]

hehe "evolve"

[@mikenwms2011]

This brings me such a childish joy. Thanks for sharing this project!

[@bachnguyencao8801]

me too hahah

[@pedromiranda5448]

Best notification I've received in a while

[@PezzzasWork]

Hope you will like it :)

[@thefollower1345]

You're not the only one

[@stefanobertolotti2555]

Same

[@dleiferives]

amen

[@tungtran1701]

Same

[@UmzGames]

Project is really going great- this was a great way to implement the soldier ants. Shows that perfect balance required between gathering resources and destroying the nearby colonies. Seems like location plays a big factor.

[@MostScaryCat]

Yeah, from what i saw, there are a few factors in play, they are: 1. How close are the nearest resource points? 2. How many are there? 3. Are there any bordering colonies? 4. Do they have access to more resource points than you do? 5. Are you close to the middle / have a clear path? There are probably more, but in my opinion these are quite important, if not the most important.

[@UmzGames]

@@MostScaryCat Yea, I noticed that proximity to more resources than the closest colony is a very strong advantage. Didn't think about the clear path but looking again it does make a significant difference.

[@punic4045]

@@MostScaryCat I found that those who branched out and discovered new resource piles earlier tended to win, especially those that established strong connection lines by the time fighting begins

[@stefanobertolotti2555]

From my experience I see that there are 3 types of ants: workers, soldiers and explorers. I wonder how will it be if you add this third type, they should be faster and release a signal of higher priority(almost the only one) for the correct path.

[@mementomori7160]

That's a good idea

[@szymonrylo5169]

@@mementomori7160 hmmm

[@grantinlow2889]

some types of ants have nurses too (but I don't know how that could be added)

[@CosmicCrimson]

There is just workers and soldiers, it’s just that in this simulation ants are able to follow a path but have different genes compared to everyone else, making them take unique paths that happen to make some ants go off-course and end up finding other resources or areas.

[@grantinlow2889]

@@CosmicCrimson your right however some species have specific worker ants (for example nurses and explorers) so even if there are only worker and soldier ants there can still be other types of worker ants

[@veradin6540]

Now this is the top down strategy game I've been dreaming of.

[@Bloodlyshiva]

With the main question being 'How can I influence this to get the victory?'.

[@Ionsto]

​@@Bloodlyshiva A while back, I wrote something similar to this to run on the GPU, the best ways of implementing player control would be. 1. Instruction pheromone - allow the player to paint pheremone directly - allowing them to "soft direct" ants at will (to attack other colonies, get a certain resource etc) 2. Population control, allow the user to dynamically set ant production rates for new nests vs worker ants - kinda boom vs rush style 3. Tech trees, allow you to improve speed, attack strength, or other stats which costs foods that the ants collect

[@Scorpy175]

Lord of the ants it's basically just lord of the Rings but with ants

[@Psychetwo]

just play starcraft and choose zerg

[@valet_noir]

"thanks for wathing" 8:53 xD Amazing vid, it is incredible to see how surprising are the outputs are differents depending on the map and the number of enemy colonies. I wonder what are the perfect parameters for a colony to position itself well in relation to its environment

[@DavidTriphon]

As much as I love the RGB color space, when choosing colors for teams, I highly recommend using the YUV color space instead. With a constant Y value, all colors will be the same brightness. In your current video, blue ants are much much harder to see than yellow ants. If you used the YUV then you would be able to easily choose different distinguishable colors while keeping all teams equally visible.

[@PezzzasWork]

Thank you for this remark!

[@DavidTriphon]

@@PezzzasWork I'm glad to be of assistance! Keep up the amazing work!

[@nak_attak]

This would make for an amazing mobile sandbox game. Just a simple UI where you can tab to place different assets such as food, walls, or different ant spawns and the ability to speed up or slow down time would make for a really simple but fun game. You could even put it for a small price to make some profit! Edit: a game similar to what I described above is called "Robot Colony"

[@blazyhell4553]

Since the project is open source, I guess someone can port it to android.

[@miniiogaming6954]

theres a game like it lol, but you can play it yourself and control things. mobile and online game

[@moments4258]

@@miniiogaming6954 Name please

[@Super-il9nb]

@@miniiogaming6954 name please

[@AryaBaskara]

@@moments4258 the only game I can think of is "Pocket Ants". Played it for a while, quite fun. You actually play as an "ant commander", so it's quite different from this but quite the same I guess

[@thundermill7109]

Sounds like it’s going to be a fun one! Love your ant projects keep up the good work.

[@songworks17]

Great video. How about: Dead ants from the same colony could give of a death hormone. Workers who encounter these, will bring the information back to the colony. The more often the colony receives these (in a short timespan?), the higher the change it'll breed a soldiers to combat the threat?

[@vaibhavbv3409]

Dead ants to be used as food?

[@MostScaryCat]

so kinda like people in a way?

[@alansus586]

@@vaibhavbv3409 I'm not an ant expert but i don't think ants eat dead ants

[@yimingwang8037]

@@alansus586 they eat dead ant, but not the same colony one

[@frosty7674]

Next Video: C++ ant simulation, ants take over earth Later: C++ ant simulation, ants rule universe Little More Later: C++ ant simulation, ants become god

[@carlomaggiolo2180]

Ant understand how to produce food for them

[@casidi7178]

C++ ants create create C++ humans simulation

[@frosty7674]

Ants do photosynthesis

[@brendancameron4111]

We've gone from walking to eating to helping to war just like mankind

[@ZeDlinG67]

Wow, it is fascinating how this project evolves; not just the ants, the visuals, the UI, controls (I'm assuming)! Still, no machineguns on the ants...

[@pampogokiraly9635]

hopefully next episode

[@MostScaryCat]

soon, the workers will have pickaxes and the soldiers will have worker machine guns.

[@Scorpy175]

@@MostScaryCat and also soon the spies are going ninja stars and ranged soldiers are going to have shields

[@tamarpeer261]

You can compare strategies: one colony will consistently produce fighters, which means less workers but be more prepared once you are attacked. The other colony will only produce fighters when needed.

[@Nugcon]

Ant ideologies

[@SandboxDude]

@@Nugcon Fasticm can be one where they are fast

[@SunroseStudios]

welp this has now turned into a self-playing realtime strategy game love it

[@aurielklasovsky1435]

I am loving every single video of yours and this is probably the best follow up video ever. To pile on with the suggestions: it seems like positioning is the major factor for ants to win or loose here. How about some variation in the ants stats and priorities? Probably based on some square law plus constant. You can have a little evolution algorithm and tournament, hopefully producing several types of ants to excel at different types of levels. Again, love your work. Please keep them coming. Cheers

[@tyler2854]

Great work so far, I’m loving how this project is turning out!

[@Pauly421]

"Thanks for wathing" 😂 This was fascinating! I just found your channel today really cool simulations! We need more!

[@blumbomium]

These videos keep getting more and more interesting. Keep up your amazing work my man

[@marc_frank]

whoever has clearest access to the most food wins the red markers could be used to mark "claimed territory" for each colony

[@marekprovaznik5233]

This is increeible, good job man, nice to see this kind of project. You are great inspiration!

[@6Twisted]

I love how simple instructions when applied on a large scale leads to complex outcomes.

[@kronusaerospace8872]

I see, the denser food in the middle acts as a decisive resource point. Whomever gain's control of it first has a massive advantage because it guarantees stable population growth, and once they have the larger population they can fight off any attempts from other colonies to take that food. In the three colony battle this allowed the yellow colony to win from a disadvantaged starting position population wise.

[@ryanmcmanus7273]

Very true through the entire video I saw two main deciders for who wins and that is isolation & least distance to the most amount of food(usually this would be the mid). Although on the fourth blue won because it was able to take hold of some uncontested piles of food by taking out red and it had a pretty short path to the mid.

[@c16rb]

fully one of the best videos on youtube - this would be the king of all flash games with an easily editable environment

[@eleanordawn8055]

Incredible! So excited to see this in my subscriptions list!

[@joseph-eleazarduhot2030]

I've been waiting for this for ages, and i am not disappointed

[@sinnvollerkommentar263]

Wow when I saw this for the first time I thought it is a one time only. Please keep improving this. I’m looking forward to the next one.your awesome

[@Sgrunterundt]

This calls for a competition. Contestants set certain parameters for their colony, like worker/soldier balance, sensitivity to the various pheromones, etc. Then pit them against each other on maps like these.

[@aurielklasovsky1435]

Yes please! I am hoping different stats will be better at different maps

[@lucasklokov8728]

This an absolutely amazing simulation of irl ants, very accurate, though there are a phew things missing to make it nearly perfect. Full applause from me.

[@sannyassi73]

The mechanics of this look similar to a Galactic Colonization game I'm currently preparing to make (GDD/Game Design Document right now)- once the documentation is near complete I'll finally start coding it- made a few games with the GDD being in my head and realized that I really need to plan more in advance so that's what I'm doing now. Very cool, nice work!

[@qwertyuiop2161]

yessssss been waiting on this =)

[@CallMeDoc_]

At first I came across this, was like, "yes. I like this." And then binged all the ant stuff that came before. Imma now go look at the rest of your content

[@markusbuchholz3518]

I assume there is not limit for your innovative way of thinking. Impressive work and remarkable results. Thank you for inspiring the great community. Keep fingers for your goals.

[@liama5223]

I love that at the end you named the chapter "Thanks for wathing" due to your spelling mistake. Made me chuckle a little bit.

[@Rodzorex]

Great work, always happy when you upload!

[@st.michaelthearchangel7774]

The ending was really cool! Looks like whatever the ants en masse grabbed was like wind blowing it away.

[@Andrecio64]

With 3 or more colonies it should be a "capturing colony mechanic" and keep growing ants with its new team

[@qwertyuiop2161]

an idea I have for the next one is maybe inside the nest activities visualised? like ants storing larva/food, along with maybe expanding nest., another idea is once an ant nest has a certian number of ants in it it will create a new queen that will go out and found a new nest that might(or might not) be allied with the original

[@ravingfurryforlife]

I could watch these all day. Love it

[@Etrius_Fysik]

First time viewer, this was surprisingly entertaining to watch. :D

[@plebisMaximus]

Really cool how the red ants just found another way to the food in the middle when the blue ants blocked one access point in the first simulation. Extremely basic AI making itself look smarter than it is. Good work on this.

[@175b2]

your welcome i loved wathing this video

[@kennywills8797]

Wow! Simulations like this have come a super long way since the 80's.

[@DeviantGodOfEvil]

I love how in the second round blue and red were relentless on killing each other while yellow was jacking the last of the food and becoming unstoppable.

[@bernardoramos7842]

There it is! The good video i was looking for! Great job!

[@memento9979]

Lesson 2 : postponing combat allowing a long and late war to happen was a mistake made by cyan and green anthills. A long war meant a war with a new strong enemy that would take over the world. Ahah France vs Germany during WW1, a long trench war that would allow USA to effortlessly take over the first march of the podium. :p Now we can understand why Germany chose the blitzkrieg at the beginning of WW2 ;) All this thanks to your 4 vs 4 anthill simulation. Once again, thank you.

[@KingFredIII]

I definitely enjoyed "wathing" that!

[@honganos]

Strong nostalgia for playing SimAnt on my family’s IBM Windows 3.2 back in the day

[@solerante]

these are great! It seems the winner is usually the nest spawning with the nearest food blob. I interpret it like those nests increase populations the soonest and population increases search space and coverage density, so the nest gets to make better 'decisions' sooner. Also, and perhaps mostly, the exponential increase in pop

[@Zebo12345678]

I would agree. The sooner an ant can bring its food back the sooner it can go to collect more. Having closer food means more throughput, which means faster population growth, which translates to more efficient food gathering from farther food sources. A closer starting food source snowballs quite quickly. I wonder how the ants would do with chokepoints, infinite food sources, and imbalanced maps. For instance, could a colony with only a single infinite food source outlast a colony with many finite food sources if there's a choke point to defend?

[@solerante]

@@Zebo12345678 That's pretty interesting. I think it would also be interesting to see the simulation run against those scenarios, but also the 'latent space' between them. So if there is a 1v1 map with a central food source, and I wonder what happens if one nest was further away or if there was an obstacle in the way or if the food had different shapes and cavities... Those scenarios may be interesting but if we call the map a picture and take a geometric 'morph' between the map of the base scenario and a modified scenario and we simulate on each of the maps generated by each step in the morph, that could also yield interesting results. Perhaps to watch something like that (in a timely manner) the videos would need to be layered over each other with each iteration using a slight brightness or hue shift or something. I just think it would be cool to have an idea of why a scenario plays out a certain way and watch to see if it's possible to determine, as a scenario changes little by little and morphs into the alternate scenario, when a result should change and why. Like, if there is a 1v1 open map except for a wall with a tiny gap between competing nests, and one nest has a nearby food source and the other a more distant food source, then if the gap is small enough, it could be difficult to press the advantage of faster growth. Seeing what happens as the gap opens wider each iteration until the advantage could be pressed and trying to predict when such a thing could happen, would be interesting.

[@Zebo12345678]

@@solerante That's a great idea too. These simulations are kind of addictive, huh?

[@awesomeduxe]

For the future: add a music option that can play music depending on the stats of colonies. If rapid decrease in ants, music gets more chase/action like. If increase, more happy music.

[@user-jg6kg1hn1k]

It just keeps getting better and better

[@alexkart9239]

IRL ants are able to utilize the corpses. We can include this process into the food chain: ant workers drags the dead ants to the hive, which gives them "food material" to born a new ones. [sorry for my bad english]

[@paulmoulard8441]

really great work, the "thanks for watching" at the end is really cool !

[@eigentensor]

You mean thanks for "wathing" :D

[@borismulder7426]

Cool simulation! I would suggest as @Joseph already said to add queens from the winning colonies that spawn a few new colonies. If you would give these queens specific genes, encoding their traits, and applying combination and/or mutation you could evolve the colonies, changing their traits depending on their environments. I know that real ants colonies do not attack colonies with the same characteristics, until they evolve to much, such that they don't recognise eachother anymore. You could also use that principle to spawn new battles.

[@kambizmoradi5723]

I like your channel and your simulation. nice work!

[@mrniceguye767]

This is art. Awesome job!

[@RecioDj]

At this rate you're going to recreate real life ants! You're awesome!

[@slugcatpotatoes]

From what i notice, some soldiers follow to enemy markers when the area is empty. Each time an ant dies the ant that killed it will make “no more enemy markers” which will allow the markers to dissipate faster

[@bustacap503]

Fascinating moving art, wow!

[@joshpascual7539]

I think the sound you use in these experiments is always overshadowed. 🎵👍

[@jerkzaskieespino420]

I have just found everything that I would ever want in this one channel.

[@wattpwn]

Would you ever consider publishing and selling this somehow? The idea of generating maps with food and terrain for ant colonies to expand and fight over seems a reasonably compelling one for an indie game. I've rewatched this like 5 times now, just looking at all aspects of how the ants behave and how they react to their environment and how heavily that determines their success against a now opposing force. Especially interesting was the interaction between food signals from different factions, like how if one side had food signals laid down, past or present, they would draw workers there, often turning the tide in nearby battles against the opposing mainly-soldier force. All in all, super cool simulation, I love your creativity and the simple readability of your sim.

[@hereandnow3156]

It's open source, you can check the description for a link

[@owencooney7178]

Part 6 idea terrain, builder ants can use dirt to create walls and bridges over water. water slows ant and potentially kills them. Dirt piles spawn and bridges and walls are destructible. Builder ants use to battle and to water scents to know where to put walls and bridges

[@andrewdunbar828]

I enjoyed wathing. I will wathe the next one. Glad I wathed it.

[@hunormagyar1843]

Slang in my national language calls white noise 'ant war'... Now this quite literally is the true definition of ant war.

[@Peppabot]

I just love during the fourth experiment blue and red just beef immediately

[@uvbe]

I could watch this all day. I want a strategy game based on this

[@cheydinal5401]

Great video! I'm always glad to wath (8:53)

[@AndyD25]

Man this ant war thing is a great tool for checking out initial map balance in resource distribution.

[@wurstkatze]

This looks more and more like a game xD Really cool!

[@MeisVlk]

This is awesome! Just an idea for possible improvement: from 7:53, the cyan soldiers seem to be trapped, i wonder if there was a way to lead them home after they killed the yellows

[@cr0ssley]

At this rate you'll have made a simulation of not only multiple colonies, but the actual ant nests! Now that is something id like to see!

[@tron-do7ii]

applying RTS strategy to this was fun. the second a colony got stable supply and got it's population ahead of the others it was over.

[@drjoaoventura]

Best notification I got in 2 years of KZbin premium

[@premnas651]

It's fun to try to call the winner about mid-way through. I called two out of three. I was certain cyan had it, but blue made a major come back lol.

[@mdellertson]

I enjoyed wathing your video! Very eduathional! ;-)

[@pipecleanermaster]

This was awesome here’s an idea for something else they can actually detect food by the smell of it and if Close enough to send food they can actually head directly towards it and if this happens you could add stuff like gaps where they could smell food across the gap and can make stuff like bridges to cross it

[@xFanth23]

Could the ants get "energy" from eating another ant-type's nest?

[@fiona9891]

it already seems like destroying another colony is a big advantage when you get access to the resources, that doesn't seem like a super great idea

[@Chielite4life]

GO BLUEEEEEEEEE Ma bois pulled that mad comeback on the last round.

[@akov3748]

ikr lol

[@akov3748]

I thought they were going to lose

[@Laderite]

I love this type of simulation !!

[@pannekook2000]

Very fun. Reminds me of the civ battle royale from a couple of years ago

[@JimNichols]

I realize that I am way late in the game here but I find it amazing that the warrior ants use choke points to control access to food thus starving an opponent out.

[@HSBF6Mark]

Nice work, I loved it

[@DavidJones-cx4ix]

Looks like the position of food is the deciding factor in all these fights the colonies with easier to access food grow faster which allows them to win fights and just snowball from there might be worth adding an ability to convert killed enemy ants into food which would have two possible outcomes either the ants with the better start just win harder or it might allow for ants with weaker starts to come back especially in battles with 4 colonies. 90% sure it would just be a win more situation but it could cause some swings in power depending on how first contact between colonies goes

[@firesoul453]

This is really cool and makes me want to tinker. Thanks for making it ope source.

[@cheeseisnice101]

So cool to see the soldier ants protect their suply lines

[@Golteck]

It was very fun wathing!

[@KalishKovacs]

this just shows that in real time strategy games, resources and economy is what wins games.

[@aryst0krat]

I found myself getting really worked up over how in the original 2 colony war, the red ants had such a huge starting advantage. But at the end of the day, anything beyond a perfectly symmetrical stalemate would have a starting advantage for one side or the other, so really I'm just mad at myself for recognizing it too soon and ruining the fun of being surprised.

[@andersonklein3587]

You are making me want to go play Sim Ant. Wish it had gotten a sequel. Kind of hopping this gets a playable version with underground colonies and a campaign like Sim Ant.

[@AKmacintosh]

This video raises all sorts of questions about ant diplomacy, what happens when two colonies meet? Is it always total war? Is there some mechanism by which hostile ant colonies gauge each other's strength and cease hostilities if the war proves too costly?

[@marcheim7]

Absolutely fascinating! Do you think its possible to achieve an equilibrium with more than one colony surviving long term? Maybe with regrowing food near the bases.

[@dylanwatts9344]

A version based on the short story Sand Kings would be amazing, where the colony can evolve different insect parts for foraging and combat. See what evolves to be the apex species. Dead insects turning to dense food would be a thing too.

[@irontemplar6222]

hmmm It seems that in the 3 colonies simulation. The Yellows got a leg up by having a blue workers accidently find its way to their nest. Resulting in an early creation of the warrior cast. Giving them a vast advantage over the blues when they encountered them in the center. Also allowing them to partially deny the Reds access to the center while completly denying the blues access to it.

[@JakiRose]

You should try it with a food source that slowly regrows. I wonder if some kind of equilibrium would develop that allows multiple colonies to survive

[@adriancabasan1916]

I have never been so lost in my entire life that I decided to watch ants fights

[@adriancabasan1916]

and yet here I am

[@Xelnarash]

unbelivelble what you can do with programming ... everytime its surprises me somehow ... soon i will be able aswell ... well not thos thingis but none the less