Back when I dabbled in writing software, I made a fun project making dots orbit other dots. It was meant to be a very rough simulation of the path the moon takes as it orbits the earth, while the earth orbits the sun. I wanted to take it one step further, and built it to be more modular, where you could input how many “earth’s” orbited the “sun”, how many “moons” orbited the “earth’s”, and a speed decay or increase between each step. Ended up with the “sun” being an origin point, the number of dots around the origin I labelled “child objects,” and the nested object depth as “generations” (what if the moon had a smaller moon that had a smaller moon).
Found out my CPU could update around 130,000 floating math points at 60fps (around 65,000 X and Y coords total, plus rendering overhead). Also found out that using specific configs, I could get it to form fractals like the Sierpiński triangle, the star of david, geometric flower shapes, lots of interesting stuff. It was very fun to play around with after finishing it.
All written with HTML, CSS, and JS, able to run in any browser. Unfortunately, I lost the project somewhere between distrohopping around a decade ago, and that was the last time I really programmed anything. All those skills have atrophied, and I don’t have the drive to get back into it.
If you do want to do some light simulation programming that produces interesting results again, I’d suggest making a Boids simulation. It simulates the way birds or fish move in flocks/schools using only three fairly simple rules. I made one once in a few hours. If you do a little extra work you can make them follow your mouse around and lead a flock of birds around your screen.
Back when I dabbled in writing software, I made a fun project making dots orbit other dots. It was meant to be a very rough simulation of the path the moon takes as it orbits the earth, while the earth orbits the sun. I wanted to take it one step further, and built it to be more modular, where you could input how many “earth’s” orbited the “sun”, how many “moons” orbited the “earth’s”, and a speed decay or increase between each step. Ended up with the “sun” being an origin point, the number of dots around the origin I labelled “child objects,” and the nested object depth as “generations” (what if the moon had a smaller moon that had a smaller moon).
Found out my CPU could update around 130,000 floating math points at 60fps (around 65,000 X and Y coords total, plus rendering overhead). Also found out that using specific configs, I could get it to form fractals like the Sierpiński triangle, the star of david, geometric flower shapes, lots of interesting stuff. It was very fun to play around with after finishing it.
All written with HTML, CSS, and JS, able to run in any browser. Unfortunately, I lost the project somewhere between distrohopping around a decade ago, and that was the last time I really programmed anything. All those skills have atrophied, and I don’t have the drive to get back into it.
If you do want to do some light simulation programming that produces interesting results again, I’d suggest making a Boids simulation. It simulates the way birds or fish move in flocks/schools using only three fairly simple rules. I made one once in a few hours. If you do a little extra work you can make them follow your mouse around and lead a flock of birds around your screen.