symbiants

ing on a pet project, but I still keep up with all the release notes and have seen lots of things to be excited about. For example, hot reloading is well on its way to being stable and their UI components are becoming much more robust. https://ant.care/ I built this with Bevy (code here: https://github.com/MeoMix/symbiants/) but have moved on to other projects for the time being. It's a cute lil sim. It'll crash on you at some point 'cuz there's a race condition when ants come back from the outer-world while hauling food, but it's still kinda fun to watch 'em go. (Also, while I'm yapping. https://loglog.games/blog/leaving-rust-gamedev/ is very true BUT ALSO people have made successful games using Bevy, or parts of it, e.g. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2198150/Tiny_Glade/)

ight not work out and that makes for a worse game. However, as a programmer, Rust is an incredibly satisfying language to write in. Everything you do always feels very technically correct. The Rust quip that "if it compiles then it probably works" is very accurate and is a continuous source of pleasure.

ime, but it hasn't. So, I'm trying to take a step back and figure out how to actually make a coherent game that does justice to the mechanics I want to see in my simulation. I've spent a lot of time thinking rather than coding, but I'm optimistic that I'll get through this phase sooner or later. I will admit, though, that trying to take a novel approach with game design is overwhelming at times. That's okay, though! I'm enjoying the process of tinkering with the project and will likely continue tinkering on it for many years to come as a creative outlet for self-actualization.

vely creating my own engine to manage state. I decided to not go that direction. I chose Rust because no GC is a language feature (especially good since GCs in WASM are heavy) and I chose Bevy because it seemed like a fairly structured way to mutate a large amount of code. Progress has been slow for a lot of the reasons listed in this article. I've written a lot of this off to WASM being a new frontier for game dev, and I'm new to Rust/Bevy/ECS/gamedev, and rationalized my effort by noting there's not a lot of complex simulation games running in browser (that I'm aware of). It's not clear to me that I've made the right decision, and just need to take the good with the bad, in order to develop the type of game I want in the type of environment I want.

e and useful, but feel free to follow along with the code or ask questions!

very Children of Time-y and some might enjoy reading bits of it: Half-Assed Technical Document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17ACH1XLCn7hkKz2dhuL1c_nx... Freeform Creative Writing of Scripted Game Intro: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wET9mWaYae_GMqbm8n37UoNF... --- Regarding the interview, I would love to know more about his process for deciding which aspects of an animal's ecology/behavior to represent in his fiction. Tynan Sylvester (creator of RimWorld, a popular video game) wrote this article called The Simulation Dream, https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/the-simulation-dream, and I think about it a lottt. One concept Tynan stresses for creating a rich and engaging simulation is to "Choose the minimum representation that supports the kinds of stories you want to generate." I would love to know why Adrian chose to give ants/spiders/(octopi..) the behaviors they have throughout his series and, if he considered other behaviors that he ultimately omitted, what his thought process was for ruling those other behaviors out.

s related to performance and event handling/change detection, which do have workarounds, but at the cost of ergonomics, and, specifically for WASM, everything (including rendering) is still single-threaded which makes the app perform worse than well written JavaScript for now. I'd be happy to try and answer any questions about my experience as a complete noob to Rust/Bevy/ECS/game development and having immersed myself ~full time on a game for the past year. FYI, you can browse my game's code here: https://github.com/MeoMix/symbiants

hen you want to deliver nicer looking stuff. When I look at how many days I've spent working on my game, and how terrible it looks, and then I look at something like Cyberpunk 2077... I struggle to conceive how we as humans were able to create those levels of graphics in a timeframe that allows for the game to be profitable. https://github.com/MeoMix/symbiants btw. Feel free to browse the code (or come volunteer! I've got a few other HNers tinkering alongside me these days)

tps://github.com/StarArawn/kayak_ui) becomes significantly more fleshed out sooner rather than later. Bevy 0.13 should have lots more in this area though (https://github.com/bevyengine/bevy/discussions/9538)

a little too lost in the sauce of the startup world and it became clear that it would take some "me time" to rebalance. So, from some perspectives, I've been doing nothing. No significant other, no money-making job, not travelling the world or living life to the fullest... but having a project that feels meaningful to me, whose existence is moderately under my control, and that I have sufficient time and energy to engage with -- that's giving me most of what I felt was missing. Well, that and dropping a bunch of widely understood bad habits and picking up some better ones. I want to see myself as a more consistent and reliable person. In my 20s, I had infinite energy. In my 30s, I'm finding that's only true if I keep myself away from alcohol and drugs, exercise constantly, connect with people, and, most importantly, be mindful of my physical and emotional state. If I start slipping into a rut, and don't notice it and nip it in the butt, suddenly it can take over my whole demeanor and disrupt a lot of good things I had going. A couple of days of bad sleep, coupled with a desire to keep pushing forward, can cause me to regress into drinking a bunch of caffeine. The caffeine will mess with my anxiety and mood and I'll be more tempted by unhealthy food and marijuana. These decisions start to take their toll, the effects compound, and suddenly I'm in a destructive cycle where I see myself being less and less each day. I start to hide from myself. All these issues were present in my 20s, but they never really seemed to be a hindrance. I could just roll with the punches and remain proud of my accomplishments. Now, in my mid-thirties, I find myself frustrated (yet a little excited) to try and figure out how to keep myself running like a well-oiled machine. I want to remain proud of my consistent growth into my later years and it's going to require getting better at working with myself. That said, I know me. I don't do well without a project that I can see myself in. It's what makes getting up in the morning worthwhile. I think it has to do with having an avoidant/dismissive emotional attachment style, or something to that effect. So, if someone were to ask me if I'm working on nothing then I guess I would always want to confidently say, "No. I am working on something, but at my own pace and with poorly-defined goals." So, in an effort to work on myself, I've given myself a project whose goal is to help me, and others, be more consistent and present. I must admit I've taken the most circuitous route possible to achieving this effect as I'm ostensibly creating a digital ant farm which functions as a mental health companion (https://github.com/MeoMix/symbiants). The goal is to create a pet whose growth fluctuates with its owners' consistency. I want to see my ant colony thrive when I am consistent. When I am feeling good I want to see my ants take on new challenges, expand their territory, stress themselves out trying to maintain growth, build habituated pathways to foods in an attempt to scale. And then, when I invariably go through an emotional downturn, I want to see my ants yield some of their land back to the fog-of-war, hunker down and weather the storm of inconsistent check-ins and less good habits undermining my personal energy. And then, when I've sated my desire for self-destruction and re-commit to being dedicated to my goals, I want to see my ants rediscover forgotten pathways, regain their ground quickly, and act as a reminder that my emotional downturns didn't undo all my personal growth. The habits are still there, hidden in fog, waiting to be rediscovered with a little effort. I want to have this pseudo-living creature that serves as a visual proxy for how well I feel I'm doing. If anyone feels similarly and could see themselves finding purpose through this effort - feel free to reach out. I would be happy to talk to you and help you find a home in the project. There's Discord and email in my bio. It's my first game, the scope is way too large, the code I've written is bad, and I have no strategy for monetization. You'll very likely become a worse Rust developer by associating with me :) ... but I know I want to create something that helps motivate people to continue showing up for themselves and I'm confident there are others out there who either feel similarly, or feel lost and could use help finding themselves with the right project. I've written a lot! Sorry for the meandering thoughts and the weird upsell of a project in a thread about working on nothing... but it all seemed relevant to me while the juices were flowing. Cheers :)