WinAnts Imagine the pixels on your screen are like squares on a chess board
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simulation simulate Pixel screen pixel chess board board simulation imagine

WinAnts Description

The WinAnts application was developed to be a small program which was designed based on a description of Ant Cellular Automata published in Scientific American, July 1994. Each Ant follows a simple set of rules, but complex behavior emerges from that system. THE RULES: Imagine the pixels on your screen are like squares on a chess board. An Ant is on a square facing in a random direction. It moves to the square in front of it. If the square is black, it changes it color and turns 90 degrees left. If the square is color, it changes it black and turns 90 degrees right. That's it. Modes are activated by parming in the specified number of Ants on the command line. e.g. "WINANTS.EXE n" - DEFAULT NUMBER OF ANTS if none are parmed in: 15 - 14 ANTS: Autoredraw on. This is a Visual Basic Thing. Normally Autoredraw is set to off due to its performance overhead. The drawback is, if you minimize the window or the screen blanker kicks in, the only thing retained for the screen redraw is the current Ant positions - not their trail of past moves. If you really want to minimize the program and let it run, use this option. Just note that it will run slower. Circle Mode on. Random Ant initialization. - 15 ANTS: Circle Mode. A centered circle acts as if filled with fluid. The Ants float through the circle to the other edge. If two Ants collide in the circle they may get stuck until another Ant knocks them out. This is the DEFAULT option if an Ant number is not parmed in. Random Ant initialization. - 16 ANTS: Natural Selection Mode. If an Ant is stepped on by another Ant, it makes a sound {ouch!} and is then turned the other Ants color. Colors are eliminated until there is a winning Ant color. Interestingly, sometimes this happens quickly, sometimes not. Circle Mode on. Random Ant initialization. - 18 ANTS: Two Step Mode. Ants will increment two squares each move instead of one. This creates an interesting 3-D effect where Ants seem to be on different "frequencies" (actually they are - some patterns are staggered and never overlap). Circle Mode on. Random Ant initialization. - 19 ANTS: Snapshot Mode. This will record initial Ant positions, color and direction for later replay. This is useful to study a particular configuration. Circle Mode on. Here's how it works: It depends on if the file snapshot.txt exists. FALSE: An Ant array is randomly generated and stored in a new snapshot.txt file. TRUE: The Ant array is loaded from the existing snapshot.txt file. The included snapshot.txt file contains an interesting repetitive pattern similar to artifacts in Conway's Life. - 20 ANTS: Benchmark Mode. Ants start in the same position and direction each time to ensure that benchmarking is valid. After 25,000 cycles elapsed wall-time in seconds is displayed. Circle Mode on. NT Use: START /REALTIME WINANTS.EXE 20 - ANY OTHER # OF ANTS: Generic configuration as described in the SciAm article. No Benchmark or Circle. # of Ants is only limited by CPU and Memory. Ants are randomly assigned position, direction and color each execution. Cheat: Pushing enter will turn one (random) Ant black. Actually an almost-black color, so the Ant rules still apply. - Winants.exe /? gives a help screen.

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