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Comment by TheAceOfHearts | Hacker News Reader

That's really cute, it reminds me that Will Wright (creator of The Sims) has referenced this book "The Ants", by Bert Holldobler in multiple occasions as a key inspiration for his games (and in particular SimAnt) and systems thinking. Did you come across that during your research phase or had you not heard about it? I haven't read it yet, but maybe someday I'll get around to it.

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Hey, I'm the one who built this particular challenge!

I had no clue, but thanks for the book lead! It didn't come up directly, but SimCity 2000 and especially SimCity 4 had a huge impact on me growing up / I still spin up SimCity 4 from time to time, so I imagine there's a massive indirect influence haha.

This is exceptionally beautiful. What did you use to build it? Vanilla JS?

This is actually all built in nextjs/react, though the initial sketches of the sim had no visualization and were just running in my terminal using bunjs

Will Wright gave at least one great lecture at SIGGRAPH. Wonderful thinker and communicator. #ACM plz unlock this culture.

Ants have fascinated me from a young age, I’d construct a viewing platform so I could watch the hive at work.

My favorite were the carpenter ants, so smart. It feels like they have a theory of mind. I didn’t hurt them, but if you disturbe their nest under a board, the efficiency and expediency they would exhibit while collecting their young was fascinating.

*edit, I meant to ask if you had any other book recommendations?

Well, I'm currently reading through "Designing Virtual Worlds" by Richard Bartle. He's known for being one of the creators of MUD (multi-user dungeon). I'm not far along enough to make a judgement on the quality of the contents, but I keep seeing the book title pop up everywhere so it seems important.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimAnt

Speaking of SimAnt, I soon discovered the bug that by moving into the top corner, the black ants would conquer all squares with no intervention from that one sideways and downwards and too easily win the game.

Still, it was fun just messing around with the ants, watching the trails, and chasing spiders by calling forth all ants.

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