I desperately want a project like this to take over my life for a few months. I'm in grad school so am juggling job hunting with coursework and other part time job duties, but I miss the feeling of giving 100% of my time and energy to one thing.
Same. So I started an ant simulation in the spirit of dwarf fortress. Simulate everything down to pheromones and fungal growth. Ants have an internal knowledge graph that can be communicated between ants and updated based on world interaction. So far it hasn't taken over my life, sadly.
Check out SimAnt if you haven't already!
As someone who loves SimAnt I would be interested in following your development if possible.