Odoramatic

Odoramatic is an ant colony simulation game.

Summary
It is based on a modelisation of the ant local and limited behaviour :

• an ant follows the strongest pheromone trail and drops pheromones on its own way, for its followers.
• it drops more pheromones when it carries some food, showing the origin of the food.
• when it finds food, it steps back and tries to come back to the nest, still following pheromones.
• when it carries nothing, it tries to find some food.
• when it does not find any pheromones, it moves randomly.
• an ant has a very limited eyesight and can only see food and nest when they are close.

The result is the apparition of ants trails, that evolve with time and perturbations. It's very interesting to watch and play with this environment and these little virtual insects.

With this simulator, you can add or remove ants, nests, food, and obstacles, to see how your ants react to these changes.

There is a help page available with all existing keyboard shortcuts.

You will use the mouse left and right buttons, while pressing F5...F8 to add and remove items from the simulation.

How to start

To start and see what happens, first run the game, press Escape to hide infos and help windows, press 'A' to switch in auto restart mode and 'S' to switch hyperspeed. Sit, watch and relax
After a while, you can try to modify things (press 'H' to read the help page).

To come...

If there is some interest in this game, I have plans to shortly develop :

• load/save maps.
• ini file to save user's settings (done).
• sliders to tweak the model parameters
• resize window & full screen (done)
• pause screen and
• ants with a limited lifetime and deaths, but also births in the nest with a queen, food consumed by ants, starvation, trophallaxis, etc...
• automatic distribution of food, like in a vivarium, to make your colony survive during your absence.
• several clans (neutral or enemy).
• several pheromones (direction of food, nest or enemy).
• sounds / music

Hope you will like this game !