Not much to report on this month, most of my creative efforts have gone into this challenge here. You have to write some AI routines to control a colony of ants as they battle other colonies on a map. (It’s rather like Core Wars which we programmed at university.)

I have to say, I’ve taken a long time to not get very far on it. But it’s a great learning experience. I’ve written some path finding algorithms (based on A*) which are great at getting the ant from where it is to somewhere else. The problem I struggled with it is where does the ant go? The poor thing is born into the world with no knowledge of its surroundings, only that somewhere out there is food (good) and enemy ants (bad).

They’re getting a bit better at exploring their world, but not quite good enough to hold their own with the big boys in the simulation yet. Here’s a sample of my ants (in orange) taking their first steps.

ants
ants

I think its fair to say that this project, however entertaining is a fail.