alt Hacker NewsThis is awesome. How do you integrate morphology into the simulation? Does morphology effect movement (via area friction or mass impact on momentum) or metabolism (via area/volume ratio)?
This is awesome. How do you integrate morphology into the simulation? Does morphology effect movement (via area friction or mass impact on momentum) or metabolism (via area/volume ratio)?
Thanks! Morphology does affect both movement and metabolism, but by design it’s modeled as biological abstraction rather than full physics.
Traits like spikes, tentacles, lobes, adhesion, and size add drag/weight, so complex or armored bodies are slower and less agile. Bigger bodies and complex structures also have higher metabolic upkeep. It’s not true fluid dynamics or area/volume math, but it’s tuned to produce the same evolutionary tradeoffs.
So you get: big and complex = strong but slow and hungry. Small and simple = fast and cheap but fragile.