# ants-simulation

GPU-accelerated ant colony simulation. ants navigate via pheromone trails, all computed in GLSL fragment shaders rendered to offscreen textures.

## stack

- three.js — WebGL renderer, render targets, shader materials
- lil-gui — runtime parameter tweaking
- vite — dev server and build
- typescript
- GLSL (raw .frag/.vert files loaded as strings via vite plugin)

## architecture

all simulation logic runs on the GPU via ping-pong render targets:

- `AntsComputeScene` — per-ant state (position, direction, scent storage) computed each frame
- `AntsDiscretizeScene` — maps continuous ant positions to discrete world grid cells
- `WorldComputeScene` — updates world pheromone grid based on ant deposits
- `WorldBlurScene` — diffuses pheromones across neighboring cells
- `DrawScene` — handles user painting (food, home, obstacles, erase)
- `ScreenScene` — final composited output with camera controls

`Renderer.ts` orchestrates the render pass order and manages all WebGLRenderTargets.
`Config.ts` holds simulation parameters exposed through lil-gui.

## commands

- `bun run dev` — start dev server
- `bun run build` — production build to `build/`
- `bun run preview` — preview production build

## shader files

in `src/shaders/`. each scene has a matched .vert/.frag pair. loaded as raw strings by the vite glsl plugin in `vite.config.ts`.

## textures

in `public/textures/` — ant.png and food.png sprites.