Ant Colony 100 Days — queen establishment to mature swarm with 13 chambers excavated
A 3D EPOCH demo: 100 sim-days from Queen Vermilia arriving alone with one starter chamber to a 13-chamber colony with sub-queen, soldier barracks, honey vault, memorial hollow, and 200 instanced workers — Attenborough-cozy and persistent across reseeds.
What this is
A 3D recreation of 100 days in an ant colony, from Queen Vermilia arriving alone to excavate her first starter chamber to a thriving 13-chamber colony with sub-queen, soldier barracks, honey vault, and memorial hollow. Sixteen-plus sub-locations get excavated over time: Queen's Chamber, Nursery, Food Storage I/II/III/Deep/Honey Vault, Garbage, Soldier Barracks, Sub-Queen Hall, Forager Lounge, Memorial Hollow, plus the surface Foraging Plain, Dew Pond, and Leaf-cutter Trail. Seventeen director cameras cut between Queen Cradle close-up, Tunnel POV, Surface Chopper, Forage Trail, Pupa Closeup, Soldier Watch, Dew Drop Macro, Food Storage Wide, Garbage Drift, Crane Reveal, Ant Eye Level, Sub-Queen Reveal, Cross Section, Dawn Surface, Dusk Entrance, Pheromone Low, Deep Cradle. Twelve named featured ants — Queen Vermilia, Soldier Tannak, Scout Pip, Forager Wisp, etc — share the colony with a 200-instance worker swarm and an 88-name pool that surfaces in the chyron rotation. Procedural sand/dirt FBM noise textures + spider-silk tunnel lines give it macro-photographic feel.
The colony remembers. localStorage saves 12 named ants with role + age + state + seenDays between reseeds. After ten minutes the world advances — worker Wisp becomes elder Wisp, elder Wisp dies, new worker Wisp II — daughter of original Wisp — takes her foraging route.
You don't play it. You watch it. And it remembers.
Why this is mind-blowing
Forager Wisp is the secret weapon. Day 22 the chyron prints "Forager Wisp returns with seed 47 — added to Food Storage I." You watch her trundle across the foraging plain camera and disappear into the tunnel POV. By Day 80 she's gray-tinted in the cast list — Elder Wisp. Reseed. Ten minutes later you're on Day 1 of Generation 2, and the chyron prints "Wisp II — daughter of original Wisp — takes first foraging trip." Same body, slightly smaller, learning the same trail. Multiply that by twelve named ants, three generations, sixteen excavated chambers, and a tunnel-and-chamber map that grows from 1 to 13 across the loop, and you've got a David-Attenborough-cozy stream that is entirely self-running, entirely persistent, and genuinely worth leaving on overnight to find aged-up the next morning. Tone is gentle: predator encounters resolve with "soldier successfully repels" — no on-screen violence.
Prompt
Build a single-file HTML page that recreates "100 days in an ant colony" as a continuous 3D autoplay world. From a single queen excavating her first chamber to a thriving 13-chamber colony with a sub-queen ready to disperse. Cozy David Attenborough macro-photography vibe.
Hard constraints:
- One HTML file, < 200KB.
- three.js r0.160.0 from unpkg, IIFE, strict mode, full disposable cleanup, reseed every ~10 min advancing the timeline (NOT resetting memory).
- First body line: <!-- ROUND16_EPOCH v1 -->
- localStorage memory under key `ant_colony_memory_v1` — 12 named ants with role + age + state + seenDays. On reseed advance ages — worker becomes elder, elder dies, new worker named after old ("Wisp II — daughter of original Wisp").
- Generational aging — larva → pupa → worker → elder progresses in real wall-clock time.
- Visible structural change — chambers excavated over time. Day 1 has 1 chamber, Day 100 has 13 chambers connected by tunnels.
- Generation counter HUD: "GEN N OF 3 · COLONY ALIVE".
- 5+ sub-locations: Queen's chamber, nursery, food storage, garbage chamber, soldier barracks, surface foraging plain, dew pond, leaf cutter trail. Final colony has 16+ named locations.
- Mini-map HUD canvas (230×170) showing all chambers + tunnels + active hotspot pulse.
- 100+ named ants total: 12 featured cast (Queen Vermilia, Soldier Tannak, Scout Pip, Forager Wisp, etc) + InstancedMesh worker swarm of 200 + 88-name pool for chyron rotation.
- 15+ director cameras: queen-cam orbit, tunnel POV, surface chopper, foraging trail, pupa close-up, soldier vs predator face-off, dew drop close, food storage wide.
- Cross-system chyron: "Forager Wisp returns with seed 47 — added to Food Storage I."
Tone: David Attenborough cozy. No graphic violence. Predator encounters resolve off-camera with "soldier successfully repels" beat.Paste this into Claude, Cursor, or Copilot. Change one thing that matters to you.
What I learned shipping it
- How to grow a colony visibly across 100 sim-days by gating chamber excavation + tunnel connections on a 0-100 progress variable
- How to use FBM noise textures for procedural sand/dirt + spider-silk tunnel lines that look macro-photographic but cost nothing in file size
- How to use localStorage to give 12 named ants a 3-generation arc where each elder has a named daughter that takes their role across reseeds