Cells

Cells each contribute a behaviour to an organism. It may collect a particular kind of energy, or it might produce additional cells. Together, the interaction of cells within an organism (and between organisms) is what produces complex systems.

In this section, we will go into the details of each cell, and its role within the organism.

Cell Types

Sprout

Sprouts are the only cell whose behaviour is directly influenced by a genome. As the simulation progresses, the geneome undergoes random mutations. These mutations adjust the behaviour of cells.

The idea is simple: when a genome produces complex behaviours to the environment (or to other cells), the system approaches a kind of equilibrium. If a simulation is stable, cells are able to survive indefinitely. In such cases, and one random mutation is unlikely to destabalise the entire system. Thus, unuseful, random mutations rarely contribute to the overall system. It is only when many mutations are collectively considered that destablising behaviours may emerge (ideally).

More details regarding the genome and how it effects cells can be found in the genome section.

Leaf

Leaf cells collect energy via photosynthesis. Simply, it produces an amount of energy that is proportional to the amount of sunlight at its position.

Root

Root cells collect organic energy from the environment. It is the only cell that is not effected by toxic levels of organic matter.

Antenna

Antenna cells collect electrical charge from the environment. It is the only cell that is not effected by toxic levels of charge energy.

Branch

Branch cells transfer energy between cells within the same organism.

Seed

Seeds can be fired by sprouts and can turn into a sprout.

Behaviour

Cell behaviour roughly boils down to whether it is a genome-executing cell (a Sprout or Seed), a energy producing cell (Leaf, Root, or Antenna), or a Branch cell.

Since we are using an ECS, any system that mutably accesses components will not be parallelisable. Additionally, in order to enforce that all cells have fair chance, we want to be certain that actions are performed in a certain order, and done so fairly. For example, if a cell wants to acquire energy from a cell to its left, which happens to be where a root cell is collecting energy, both cells should be given only half the energy each, where any remainder is left in the environment.

Because of this, a we are required to publish “requests”, which can then be processed and applied later on. This way, all requesting actions can access cells immutable and in parallel, and then responding systems that apply these request can implement any kind of logic to ensure fairness (such as dividing energy evenly).

By doing this, the processing of requests can also potentially be parallelised.

The general idea overall is that ECS allows you to query the current state as read-only, and then publish your intended action without yet executing the task. Once all requests are made, the requests can be processed as necessary, either in order or potentially in parallel.