Generative animated artwork built with a custom pixel-perfect WebGL rendering engine.

DIORAMAS is a study in world-making. The worlds made here consist of pixels and abstract forms designed to mimic some sense of nature. Creatures exhibit behaviors considered natural such as group flocking and smooth navigation. Landscape elements such as trees and mountains grow and mutate according to algorithmic growth patterns. Together these make up an artificial, low-resolution world reminiscent of early video games that performs as a desktop terrarium. It is designed to be experienced in real-time, forever.

DIORAMAS leverages the open-form format to grow and shrink. Each iteration inherits different traits from its lineage, while also relying on stochastic generation to build a unique world. It is crucial to note that the system cannot grow infinitely. Like our own world, the environment grows and thrives, but eventually deteriorates and returns to dust.

The evolution works as follows:
Level 0 -> Sets the environment (tree types, ground texture, color palette).
Level 1 -> Expands the environment slightly, air population grows.
Level 2 -> Introduces small ground organisms, expands the environment more.
Level 3 -> Mountains begin to grow, ground population increases.
Level 4, 5, 6, ... -> Population keeps growing.
Level 10+ -> De-growth begins, population declines, ground erodes.

Inspired by Craig Reynolds's work on steering behaviors for video game characters and Jeffrey Ventrella's artificial life explorations. In assuming that natural behaviors can be discretized into code, these synthetic organisms computationalize us as we project organic characteristics onto them.

Press '1', '2', '3', '4' to tilt the camera down.
Press 's' to capture a single frame.
Press 'g' to download an animated GIF clip (150 frames). Please make sure to let the animation run for at least 30 seconds first. Resize the browser window to produce a smaller or larger GIF.
Made with vanilla javascript and WebGL. By @galoandstuff.