There's vegetation, represented by the green dots. but there's no discerning between what types of vegetation they represent. So what should define a plant? So far the basics are;

• waterThreshold - how wet the soil can be before it's starts to die off
• nutrientRequirement - how many nutrients it needs per tick to grow
• growthRate - how much it grows per tick
• decayRate - how fast it decays if it doesn't get enough nutrients
• spreadRate - how fast it spreads to new territoryI think that gives vegetation enough diversity to have a good variety. But I'd like everything in the world to have some what of a significant effect on the eco system. Right now, the only effect vegetation has, is it takes nutrients from the soil, and it prevents the spread of water. One other effect, that might be enough, producing fruit. Once animals are included, they'll need a way to stay alive. So I'll add;
  
  • fruitProdRate - how fast the plant produces fruitNow not all plants have to produce fruit, and it doesn't have to be fruit. That would just be a generic value. Each plant could have a tag to id's the type of food it produces. Maybe things like pear or apple trees produce a fruit type food. Were as bamboo and grass produce a leaf type food. Then the type would be used by the animal to determine what types of plants it prefers to eat from.
    
    Firstly though, I putting together the atmosphere layer. To have clouds that form from water vapor, and cause rain the returns the water to the soil. Each tile will have a temperature, which effects how fast the water evaporates. I then use a randomized layer of pressure to generate wind across the tiles that slowly moves the atmosphere across the land.
    
    Think of a layer in the grid with each tile having a random number. This layer is then moved in a direction each tick, to simulate the spinning of the earth. Depending on how high the pressure currently in the tile, it'll pull some of the atmosphere from tiles near by with higher pressure. hopefully that made sense I'll have to put some pictures together.
    
    Then I was thinking about animals and how could I keep them simple but still be able to mess around with ai. I'm leaning towards just having a simple ai that, constantly looks for food once it reaches a hunger threshold. If it isn't hungry, it just makes sure it's either near it's kind or away from bigger threats. I'm not sure though.