Pond life

Back in 2014 I wrote a pond life simulation in BBC BASIC for Windows and promised to share the source code.

With thanks to Ed for the prompt, I have spent the morning getting it ready and it is now available for download from my OneDrive.


In this simulation, a number of 'critters' move around a world trying to stay alive. Critters eat grass, and if they don't get enough they die. Each critter is blind and moves around randomly in the hope that they will find food or a mate (they don't have Tinder nor do they have the Tesco app).

There are a number of parameters that you can play around with, including:

  • how many critters start out;
  • how likely a critter is to die of old age or hunger;
  • how quickly the grass grows;
  • how likely two critters will breed;
  • how satisfying the grass is;
  • how many critters can be born in one 'litter';
  • and more.

This simulation is intended as a bit of fun only and I hope you enjoy it. Whilst commenting the source code I have noticed at least two places where the efficiency of the simulation is really bad. I mean REALLY BAD and massive improvements are in the pipeline.

Until then, enjoying being a pond god and I'll see you for the next geeky post which I promise will be about something.

If you want more life simulations, then you might like this post, or, who knows, even these ones.

Maybe you just want to write something on the noticeboard.