TITLE: COLONY — an ant colony toy
PROMPT: Build 'COLONY', an ant-colony emergence toy: hundreds of ants leave the nest searching; those finding food lay pheromone trails that others follow and reinforce — watching trails crystallize to sugar, then evaporate when depleted. The nest has dug tunnels growing over time; ants carry crumbs home; a tiny aphid farm appears if you let a colony thrive. Palette: sandy loam cross-section, sienna ants, crystalline sugar white. Interactions: place food (sugar, crumbs, apple slice) anywhere; draw obstacles with a pencil tool; a RAIN event floods tunnels and ants evacuate larvae; sliders for evaporation rate and colony size; a pheromone-view toggle reveals the invisible map in glowing heat. Emergent, mesmerizing, alive.
DESCRIPTION: An emergence sandbox in a sandy loam cross-section: a nest mound with tunnels that grow as food accumulates, and up to 400 wandering ants with a simple brain — random walk, gradient-following on a pheromone field (sampled left/center/right), food smell within 90px, homing when carrying — where successful foragers lay trail that others reinforce, so living trails crystallize toward your food and evaporate when it runs out. Place sugar, crumbs, or apple slices anywhere; draw soil walls with the pencil; a RAIN event sends the colony rushing home, washes a tunnel segment away, and streaks the screen; the pheromone-view toggle reveals the invisible field as glowing heat. Stats track ants, food found, and tunnel segments; ants render with two-phase legs and turn white when carrying.
TECHNIQUES: raster pheromone field (offscreen canvas grid with getImageData sampling, deposition, and periodic uniform evaporation), three-point gradient trail following, food-sense steering with angular easing, wall repulsion, cross-section soil rendering, growing tunnel log tied to foraging success, rain event choreography, two-phase leg animation.
INTERACTION: Click to place the selected food (sugar/crumb/apple) or draw walls (pencil/erase tools); sliders tune evaporation and colony size; RAIN floods the colony; PHEROMONES toggles the heat-map view of the invisible field.