breve
A toolkit for building 3D simulations of multi-agent systems and artificial life. Being resurrected.
breve makes it easy to build 3D simulations of multi-agent systems and artificial life. Using Python, or a small scripting language called steve, you define the behaviours of agents in a 3D world and watch how they interact. It includes physical simulation, collision detection and an OpenGL display engine for visualizing the simulated worlds.
I wrote and maintained breve for years to support research on artificial life and evolutionary computation. The project went quiet around 2009 and has suffered considerable bit-rot since, along with the questionable coding practices of a much younger me. It’s now being brought back to life.
A new version, in the browser
The new breve is a rebuild for the web: a simulation is a small JSON file plus a short script, and it runs in the page, with no install. The demo beside this text is the classic first example, a flock of 300 boids that each follow three rules (stay close, line up, don’t crowd). Drag to look around.
The whole behaviour is one short file, flock.js, with the settings in boids.json. The code is at github.com/jonklein/breve.js.