stop. start. stutter.

Today's timesuck: breveCreatures, an iterative artificial evolution simulation screensaver. Basically, you get a bunch of blocks connected together (in often non-Euclidean fashion, heh) and the object is to have it move as far from the origin point as possible; the blocks move at all points of join/articulation, and the locomotion either moves the piece as a whole or makes it work against itself, based on how it's constructed.

That's not the cool part. The cool part is: Every "generation" (25 iterations), the design evolves by taking the most "successful" designs of the previous generation and "breeding" them together, introducing random mutation, and continues to see which one is successful and which ones aren't. It remembers the state, so when you turn off the screensaver, it goes back to where it was in the process when you turn it back on.

The early generations are the ones that have the most drastic changes, whereas by a certain point you just want to restart it and give yourself something new to look at, but: Go, little creatures, go! Have little block sex and build the next generation for my amusement!