Cromulant

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What is this?

This is a kind of toy you can use for your amusement.

You start with random ants from a list of 1000 names.

The ants will produce random updates.

The updates can be random non-sensical sentences.

The ants can score triumphs or take hits.

You can adjust the speed of the updates.

Usage

You start with a set of 25 to 250 random ants (100 by default).

You can specify this anytime through Restart. When you restart everything resets to zero like triumphs and hits.

There are 1000 names available. This is used as the pool of names to select randomly.

Every x minutes or seconds a new update from a random ant appears.

The content of the update depends on a random number.

It can be a triumph, a hit, travel, thought, sentence.

The ant with the highest score is shown in the footer.

Ants get merged and replaced over time.

All of this happens automatically, though you can manually force actions by using the mouse on the portraits or main menu. Try click and middle click.

Read Algorithm for more information about the mechanics.

Installation

Quick Installation

If you have pipx and linux installed you can use the following command:

pipx install git+https://github.com/madprops/cromulant --force

Advanced Installation

1. Clone this repo.

2. python -m venv venv

3. venv/bin/pip install -r requirements.txt

4. Use run.sh or venv/bin/python -m cromulant.main

5. (Optional) Manually create desktop entries and icons for the application.

Algorithm

A random ant is picked based on weights (oldest update date weighs more). Then a random number between 0 and 12 is picked. For each number an action happens to produce an update.

The top score is calculated as (Triumph - Hits). If multiple ants have the same score, the oldest one wins.

For merge, the words of each name are used. They get filled with random words if less than 2 words. One word from each set is picked randomly. The triumph and hits get combined. The original ants get terminated and the merged one hatches. An extra random ant is hatched to fill the gap.

Technology

This is made with python + qt (pyside6)

The name

I read the word cromulent being used somewhere which turned out to be invented by The Simpsons.

I created a new programming project to practice/study and tried to use that word for the name but made a typo.

I liked the typo and made a game about ants.

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Command line arguments

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