know it's crap right now, but I'm looking for some feedback on what might be working and what isn't.

I also spent a good deal of time working on optimizing performance. I optimized array access, and stripped out graphics that weren't really important. Evan after all the optimizations, the simulation can only support about 100 or 200 organisms before performance begins to suffer.

I did work on the interface, adding back most of the data I was previously tracking like organism count, cycles per second, and fps.

It's a little unexpected, but it looks like I'm heading down the path of adding UI elements. text boxes, expanding windows etc.

As the video shows I did have an issue as the longer the simulation ran(or more organisms were in the environment) the speed dropped significantly. So More optimization is still required.

Completed the initial functionality of reproduction, copying it's own specific properties into it's offspring.

Added visual indication of the "constructs" of each organism as it grows(the colored dots inside fo it). Each specific construct allows the organism to produce a specific compound by consuming the required input compounds.

It's not very exciting but I've been finding all sorts of issues that I didn't know about, and things are improving one little step at a time.

When I find something that isn't working as I expect it to I investigate, often by adding additional logging so I can see what is happening, finding the problem and fixing the code. Rinse and repeat.

If the organism was far away from the center of the rectangle, it would not behave appropriately. So I decided I needed to calculate the center of the overlapping bounding boxes. It was a bit of work, but I liked the results. (the blue boxes represent overlapping bounding boxes)

Eventually I discovered a flaw in my wall avoidance. Each rectangular wall segment was a single stretched rectangle, so when I'd test for a collision, and then attempt to move away, I'd be moving away from the center of the wall.

I'd spend the next few weeks making various improvements to problems I'd find. One of the biggest changes would be to have each organism write out it's own log file so I could much easier see what exactly each one was doing.

I lost count of the number of changes I needed to complete to get things to this point. Just trying to get them to avoid moving through walls was a feat in itself. The red circles indicate each organisms area that it can "see".