Gene Pool is an artificial life simulation of a 2D pool or pond. It starts with a number of swimbots – simple creatures that need energy to swim around. They look for food, which appears as green blobs, and if they have enough energy they look for another swimbot to mate with. When they mate, a new swimbot is born (as a white blob), and quickly grows into an adult swimbot. If they run out of energy, they turn grey and die. There’s a limited supply of food (energy), so you will see the usual oscillation between population & food – as swimbots multiply, the food runs out, then more swimbots die, and food increases (top trace is food, bottom is population):
Swimbots compete for food (energy) and mates. Successful swimbots reproduce – unsuccessful ones die. Every swimbot has a main body part with a mouth at one end (shown as a double line when it’s looking for food) and a reproductive organ at the other (shown as a single line when it’s looking for a mate, and with an arrow if it’s found one).
Each swimbot contains a genetic code, which is inherited by mixing genes (crossover) from both parents, together with some random genetic mutation. Genes control how the new baby swimbot grows – what size, shape, colour and how many body parts. Swimbots are attracted to others nearby with a similar color. In these snapshots you can see the offspring (white) shortly after the blue and blue-green swimbots mated – the second snap is the fully grown offspring:
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