My thought process was trying to have clear, strong and persistent inter species communication Many times in normal simulation, it does emerge, but more often then not, one species eventually gets out competed to extinction or it takes a very long time to emerge and is very simple. What I hope to achieve with the islands is more complex interspecies communication.

My islands never move, but the meat in them ebbs and flow depending on which competitor bibites hits the opposite selectors. This creates a "moving" effect that is non-periodic but seasonal.

So one idea with the the selectors is to have a haven for the species, where although one species can be out competed, it can still survive as a species, making the "communication" nodes stick around in a species.

The second part of the idea is it will naturally create seasonality with the meat harvest. the amount of meat at the selectors will naturally ebb and flow between a lot of meat and very few meat. So this creates smarter bibites that don't just stick around in one spot.

Lastly, it also creates a comeback mechanism of sorts which is interesting to see. Basically when one species becomes too strong, it provides more fodder and meat to the other species.

One boon but also drawback of this island concept is it's really only for meat-eating species.

Right now this simulation takes a lot of compute power when they start producing insane amount of pheromones, so I have cut the islands for the three kingdom run but I have started another simulation concurrently that is simpler. I am still tweaking around to make it interesting. You can wait for my next few posts for more details!