Rosella

Watch a chaotic ecosystem unfold right in your terminal. This is a boids simulation—those classical flocking birds that somehow manage to be both predictable and gloriously messy all at once.

What's Happening Here?

You've got a bunch of little critters (boids) bouncing around following three simple rules:

• Separation: don't crash into your friends (basic manners! I do like you, but not that much :D)
• Alignment: swim/fly in the same direction as your neighbors (peer pressure works, even in the digital world!)
• Cohesion: stick together-ish (lonely is not fun, let's stay friends :) )

But that would be boring, so I added some chaos:

Predators

Angry crosses hunting our poor boids. They're rather slow, but insistent. Currently implemented with a simple follow-nearest greedy algorithm.

Allures

Shimmering points that our little boids find irresistible. Boids will often head for these even with predators nearby. Bad life choices make for some great entertainment :D

Random Enlightenment

Sometimes boids just get it and wander off. Celebrate their brief moment of philosophical awakening before they go back to being confused little dots. Originally implemented to reduce clustering and overly predictable patterns.

How to Run It

pip install rosella
rosella

Default constants are decently sensible – in my opinion :) – but feel free to pass cli flags to tweak behaviour. Some behaviours require flags.

rosella -h # Check flags
rosella --boid-density 1750 # Custom density (pixel-acres per boid)
rosella --allure-chance 35 # 1/35 chance per frame

Control it as you watch:

• Q: quit
• LMB: spawn an allure!

Your terminal is the world. Watch it all unfold in beautiful Braille pixel art.