Fungal Life Simulation

This project simulates fungal growth using a grid-based visualization and generates an animated GIF of the simulation.

Project Files

• fungalLife.js: The main JavaScript file that contains the code for the fungal growth simulation.

Setup Instructions

1. Install Dependencies: Ensure you have Node.js installed. Then, install the required npm packages:

   npm install canvas gifencoder

2. Run the Simulation: Execute the following command to run the simulation and generate the GIF:

   node fungalLife.js

Code Overview

Grid and Cell States

• The simulation uses a 200x200 grid.
• Each cell can be in one of the following states:
  • EMPTY: Represented by 0.
  • HYPHAE: Represented by 1.
  • TIP: Represented by 2.
  • SPORE: Represented by 3.

Initial State

• The grid is initialized with one spore placed at the center of the grid.

Update Rules

• Spores can turn into tips with a probability of 0.1.
• Tips grow into hyphae and can create new tips in one of the eight possible directions (including diagonals).
• Hyphae can randomly turn into spores with a probability of 0.01.

Visualization

• The grid is visualized using the canvas library.
• Different cell states are represented by different colors:
  • EMPTY: White
  • HYPHAE: Green
  • TIP: Dark Green
  • SPORE: Brown

GIF Creation

• The simulation is captured and saved as an animated GIF using the gifencoder library.
• The GIF is created with a delay of 100 ms between frames and a quality setting of 10.

Main Simulation Loop

• The simulate function runs the simulation for 1000 iterations and generates the GIF.

Output

• The output GIF file will be saved as fungal-life.gif in the project directory.

Example Command

To run the simulation, use:

node fungalLife.js

Notes

• Modify the grid size, cell size, and probabilities in the code as needed for different simulation behaviors.
• Ensure the required libraries are installed before running the script.