🐜 Ant Colony Simulation

📌 Overview

A simulation of ant behavior in search of food using pheromones. Ants move across a grid, leave pheromone trails, and interact with their environment, mimicking real colony behavior.

🔁 Core Principles

• Ants search for food: They start from the nest and move randomly.
• Pheromones: When an ant finds food, it returns to the nest, leaving a pheromone trail.
• Pheromone evaporation: Over time, pheromone traces fade to prevent "stuck" paths.
• Following pheromones: Other ants are more likely to follow stronger trails.

🧱 Simulation Structure

Element	Description
🟩 Nest	The starting point for all ants
🟨 Food	The target that ants must find
🐜 Ant	An agent that moves across the grid
🔵 Pheromones	Trails left by ants, visualized with color

🧠 Ant Behavior

• If no pheromones → move randomly.
• If pheromones are present → move toward the strongest concentration.
• If food is found → return to the nest, leaving pheromones behind.
• If in the nest with food → start searching for food again.

⚙️ Expansion Possibilities

• Multiple food sources.
• Obstacles in the path.
• Different ant types (scouts, workers).
• Statistics tracking: route efficiency, collected food amount.
• Adapting to environmental changes.

💻 Implementation

• Languages: C++.
• Rendering: OpenGL.

Getting started

0. For MacOS builds you need to have SDK mounted.
1. Open workspace in provided Devcontainer.
2. Set wrokspace for target paltform

# MacOS (x64)
cmake -B build-macos-x64 -D TARGET_PLATFORM=macOS-x64

# MacOS (ARM)
cmake -B build-macos-arm64 -D TARGET_PLATFORM=macOS-arm64

# Linux (x64)
cmake -B build-linux-x64 -D TARGET_PLATFORM=linux-x64

# Linux (ARM)
cmake -B build-linux-arm64 -D TARGET_PLATFORM=linux-arm64

# Windows (x64)
cmake -B build-win-x64 -D TARGET_PLATFORM=windows-x64

# Windows (ARM)
cmake -B build-win-arm64 -D TARGET_PLATFORM=windows-arm64

3. Build target paltform (only executable, AntColonySim)

# MacOS (x64)
cmake --build build-macos-x64 --target AntColonySim

# MacOS (ARM)
cmake --build build-macos-arm64 --target AntColonySim

# Linux (x64)
cmake --build build-linux-x64 --target AntColonySim

# Linux (ARM)
cmake --build build-linux-arm64 --target AntColonySim

# Windows (x64)
cmake --build build-win-x64 --target AntColonySim

# Windows (ARM)
cmake --build build-win-arm64 --target AntColonySim