𝚛𝚞𝚕𝚎_𝚘𝚏_𝚋𝚒𝚛𝚍𝚜

Note - this is a crosspost from my new blog on Patreon. Please follow me over there! https://www.patreon.com/avianage Avian Age is undergoing steady development, with a prototype featuring the Upland Moa picking up a nomination for Excellence in Representation at the NZ Games Fest this year! You can play it here: verteks.itch.io/avian-age 01: Land Bridges and Flying Kākāpō

DISCLAIMER: The claim that the described Kākāpō relative may have been able to fly is an extrapolation made in a Canterbury University press release, that is not present in the content of the referenced paper! While it may be plausible, I don't want to misrepresent the literature. https://www.canterburymuseum.com/explore/latest-news/a-lost-world-unearthed-ancient-cave-reveals-million-year-old-k%C4%81k%C4%81p%C5%8D-ancestor

The specific focus of this post is the recent find of 1-to-1.5 million-year-old fossils, in a cave in Waitomo. It reveals that as well as the huge interchange of species between islands during this time period, there was also a process of natural extinction normally unseen in an island ecosystem. (Worthy et al. 2026) This challenges my limits for science communication.

I’ll slow down and step back here, because there’s already a lot of exciting factors siting in this paper’s premise that will come to shape the narrative beats of Avian Age.

CONTEXT: The Early Pleistocene, 2MA to 1MA.

Tectonic activity has hoisted the landmass of Aotearoa out of the ocean, with the ongoing uplift of the Southern Alps entering an accelerated rise. The climate alternated between glacial and interglacial periods frequently, and the sea dropped from ~50 to up to 120 metres below its present level.

The North and South Islands were connected by continuous stretches of land, which shifted in shape and habitability from the Western, long, narrow stretch around the Wanganui Basin to the Eastward, shorter stretch of deep waters that we now know as the Cook Strait.

This “land bridge” is the entire reason the Moa was able to speciate into the North Island, as the Zealandia continent was almost entirely submerged 25 to 23 Million years ago. The palaeognath ancestor of the moa flew to New Zealand from South America between 30 and 60 MYA.

The 2MA to 0.5MA bridge is the period where the Kākā and Kea parted evolutionary ways, with the Kea arising from ecological pressure in the especially cold Southern alpine environments, and the north island and south island Kākā finding their own differences in their respective niches.

The early Pleistocene is the period where the ancient NZ palaeognath, the Moa, was finishing its speciation into the forms we know now. Simultaneously, it is the time where the Australian little eagle found its way here, and evolved to its massive proportions in an incredibly short timespan; in order to seize on the opportunity to become the apex predator of this mostly herbivorous, defenseless fauna ecology.

This eagle, which claimed its title as the most massive bird of prey between 1 million and 700,000 years ago, is the Pouākai/Haast’s Eagle -- or, Fuller’s Eagle, as (Holdaway, 2025) suggests, to pay better homage to the scientist who made the excavation and initial identification of the bones as belonging to a giant bird of prey.  

If the Moa is our hero, Pouākai is the key “antagonist” – but it is also a part of what made the native ecosystem thrive.

The kiwi is also a paleognath with has an ancient lineage in New Zealand, but its speciation into the five species we know now is recent, and its development of a forebrain structure for foraging by scent is entirely unique in the proto-bird order it belongs to. (Corfield et al. 2008)

The only kiwi record we have from the 2-1 MA period and prior to the 17-19 million-year-old St. Bathans speciemens (which reveal the link to the kiwi’s flight-capable ancestor) is the Marton Kiwi, Apteryx littoralis (Tennyson, Tomotani 2021) – a species similar to the Okarito and North Island Brown Kiwi, that lived 1 million years ago but is non-existent today.

All of this niche-finding and interplay remained limited to coastal regions when it came to the North Island for most of this time, as the land was rocked by the immense destructive movements of the Taupo Volcanic Zone -- most notably the Ngaroma 1.5MYA and Kidnappers 1 MYA supervolcano eruptions -- the latter of which capped off the period I'll be covering.

Between the layers of ash and tephra that cloaked the landscape and provided time-coded layers of one and one and a half million years in its stone, (Worthy et al. 2026) discovered the bones of a Kākāpō ancestor which, in contrast to the giant, proto-Strigopoidea (Kākāpō, Kākā, Kea) parrot which had huge, stout leg bones and was flightless, this species had leg bones unsuitable for climbing in the same way, while being otherwise similar in form to the Kākāpō. (Worthy et al. 2026). It is not out of the realm of possibility for this extinct Kākāpō relative to have been capable of flight.

This reveals that extreme climate events such as glaciation and volcanic activity was likely a cause of species we have no present record of, becoming extinct.

This clouds our view of what the exact picture was of the plethora of fauna living during this relatively recent, dynamic epoch, but it also clears the way for discovery of species that were lost to time that are familiar, yet unlike the birds we now know.

For these reasons: Ground context of the evolutionary co-origin of the moa and Pouākai, extended, relatively habitable land bridge, relative resolution of the different species of each bird, and anchor points of the ancient Alps to the South and Volcanic dynamism in the North, and the prospect of more finds that shed light on now-extinct species – species made entirely extinct by natural processes, not just in certain regions, I am shifting the timeframe of Avian Age’s story to this deeply fascinating period.

There will be context given at the start for ecological keystones; the ghosts of Gondwana, the Oligocene Drowning, the beginning of the uplift of the Alps and abundant St Bathans fauna that followed, what we know of the origins of key species.

There is also plenty to work with in regards to the time that followed, before these species found their final pre-human niches. This is where I set the “Mauri” prototype, which focuses on the Upland Moa’s seasonal Alpine migrations. As glacial oscillation became more frequent in the late Pleistocene, certain, scant opportunities arose for inter-island crossing, and the Taupo Volcanic Zone once again devastated vast regions and pushed species into refugia. More on this to come.

So, I hope you’ve enjoyed this sort of breakneck journey through what is only really a slice of the natural history of New Zealand.

Let’s translate this into the elements that I want to build into Avian Age:

-          Terrain modelling of the land bridge region, between the Alps of the upper South Island and volcanic regions of the Lower North Island.

This is an anchor point that will dictate where levels are set and the journey the campaign takes.

-          Representation of the evolution of the Moa, and the Eagle as it moves from only being capable of preying on smaller moa and birds to the giant Dinornis.

This provides a progression not only to more difficult levels with more natural predation, but more specific ecology information.

-          Extinctions happening not just as species are out-competed and driven out of certain pockets of habitat, but entirely wiped from the evolutionary record, and what it may have taken for the remaining species to survive.

This is another huge tool to work with in creating game mechanics and win/ performance conditions, as well as unavoidable outcomes, for each level.

Please, let me know if you want me to dive deep in a certain direction! Right now, we are focusing on the Moa, Eagle, Kākāpō, Kākā, Kea and Kiwi in structuring the next playtests.

And get in touch if you want to talk about the content here! Especially if there’s anything I’ve got wrong. I want this game to be the best educational resource possible.

That is all for now,

Mā te wā. -Robbie

Sources:

Archer, M., Hand, S. J., Long, J., & Worthy, T. H. (2023). Prehistoric Australasia: Visions of evolution and extinction. CSIRO Publishing.

Bunce, M., Worthy, T. H., Phillips, M. J., Holdaway, R. N., Willerslev, E., Haile, J., ... & Cooper, A. (2009). The evolutionary history of the extinct ratite moa and New Zealand Neogene paleogeography. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(49), 20646-20651.

Corfield, J. R., Wild, J. M., Hauber, M. E., Parsons, S., & Kubke, M. F. (2008). Evolution of brain size in the Palaeognath lineage, with an emphasis on New Zealand ratites. Brain Behavior And Evolution, 71(2), 87-99.

Holdaway, R. N. (2025). The genus name for the extinct New Zealand Eagle (Accipitridae) and a suggested replacement for an inappropriate vernacular name. Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club, 145(4), 406-410.

Tennyson, A. J. D., & Tomotani, B. M. (2022). A new fossil species of kiwi (Aves: Apterygidae) from the mid-Pleistocene of New Zealand. Historical Biology, 34(2), 352-360.

"The real world is such a rich ground for inspiration"

An interview with Nico King, Executive Creative Director of Chaos Theory Games, Sydney.

I'm going to do something a little different and start this update by acknowledging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the traditional custodians of Australia.

The Gadigal of the Eora Nation are the traditional custodians of what is now known as Sydney. I pay my respects to their Elders past and present, and I extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who may read this.

I recently had the opportunity to visit Sydney, NSW Australia for the Sunrise festival, presented by Blackbird. While I was in town, I got an opportunity to meet a couple of the minds behind some of my favourite videogames in the education and science communication space.

Nico King is a co-founder of Chaos Theory, which produced the fantastic and colourful marine conservation game Rainbow Reef, and authored the studio's manifesto on "Serious", or Transformative Games, which you can check out here.

The following is a conversation we had where I looked for deep insight into teaching ecology through emotionally resonant videogames, and to learn from the process and structure of a long- standing and socially-aware game studio.

Content has been modified from the original audio transcript with Nico's permission.

(Still from Rainbow Reef)

How does your framework for "transformational games" shape your process working with clients?

I’d say it’s a useful tool in the game design process.

I wouldn’t say it causes any friction working with clients or groups – It’s a series of lenses to look at your project through, particularly useful in pre-production and design, just to make sure that you’re considering more aspects of your game than just “is this a fun game” or “is this marketable?” – basically for digging down into how to actually create change within people.

We take a flexible approach in implementing it – in some projects we use it wholesale with all its steps, in some projects with just a subset of the overall framework. A lot of the cases where we don’t do the former just comes down to time and budget constraints, and where it’s not the right tool for the job; not every project needs the same level of effort invested in transforming people as the guide suggests.

As an example, education is usually a bit more straightforward in terms of game design, where we can more wholesale integrate curriculum content and do pre-and-post surveys; we certainly think about a number of the aspects of the transformational framework, but don’t require the overall sort of detail.

(I bring up Energy Transformers, a project made with Dr Donna Green, Digital Grid Futures Institute & UNSW Sydney, where the process of creating a sustainable Australia is presented as a gamified city builder where making the right choices rewards the player and progresses its objectives. The game concludes with an opportunity for students to write to their local government representative about sustainable investment with a premade template.

This shifts the conversation towards the studio’s work regarding environmental education);

I think two of the sections that are most specific for environmental games are being specific with the transformation, or the change that you want to see, and the barriers that people might face – because environmental games might have a lot of potential, but making sure that makes it through those barriers and finding its way into peoples' hands.

In an educational project being rolled out through schools, there are fewer barriers - or potentially a broader scope to speak with people - but it’s also being engaged with as work, in the context of a class environment. On the flip side, if you’re creating a game primarily as entertainment, there are barriers that both you and the audience face – for instance, if an individual is willing to pay you to play your game, they’ve self-selected as someone who holds a particular worldview; people who seek out games about environmental awareness, they probably already share your way of thinking in that sense. So, understanding your relationship with the barriers to people playing your games is important.

I’m quoting the computer scientist Richard Hamming here – “In scientific communication there is a fine line between science and entertainment, and scientists must stay on the right side of that line.” Would you consider CTG scientists in that sense? – and do you think that scientific rigor can get in the way of entertainment?

We’re definitely not scientists! We are definitely on the entertainment side – For a lot of our projects, we collaborate with subject matter experts; scientists or experts in their respective fields, and it’s often a push-and-pull relationship where scientists are looking to represent their study appropriately, and we looking at all of our project goals which often go beyond that. So it’s good when those differing frameworks are working together – the reality of game development, for Serious games is that they’re an approximation; a simulation of true reality – it’s almost impossible to build a 1:1 representation of reality as a game.

(I add that the same can be said of science itself – that it is broadly a framework for creating more understandable models of reality that provide insight into a deeper truth of how the world works.)

Yeah – and scientists use a lot of models, and games *can* be viewed through that lens of being models (this is more true in simulation games) – though there are also the different factors we deal with such as player motivation, or narrative and storytelling, or measurement of learning – there’s a lot of way it can be approached.

How do you go about measuring something like learning as a KPI? (Key performance indicator)

It varies – on one end of the spectrum, pre-and-post surveys and interviews can often reveal whether or not the original KPIs are met, and on the other end would be our projects that had more ambiguous goals or targets, and in those cases, the best tools we have found for realizing those nebulous, long- term goals related to behaviour change is “the theory of change” –

Essentially, looking at a series of steps required to get to a long-term change, breaking it down into what we can measure, and measuring as far up the chain as we can to accurately infer the long-term change. 

On a 10-year timescale – some small steps could be changing sentiment and knowledge acquisition, trying a new positive action,  - and forming new habits. One step does not necessarily lead to the next, so it takes a lot of really looking at the relation between how many steps get taken up each one of those stairs, and iterating on your design to achieve that final change.

What inspired you to do what you do? Both growing up, and getting into the game dev space and finding your focus.

So, I’ve known my two co-founders since we were about ten and had the studio since we were about twelve - we’ve always wanted to create games that inspire positive change, and we’ve been very open to different ideas – early on we did a lot of conservationism and sort of enlightenment ideals, always interested in science and the natural world, and I guess the short answer is that we always said if we could make games about anything, why not something positive? We’ve certainly made games with a more fictional setting, but I think the real world is such a rich ground for inspiration, and creating games that solve problems is more meaningful. And I think that when done right, you can both solve those problems and entertain people.

Man, I say that about looking towards nature for inspiration all the time, and when you’re making a simulation it’s almost hard to know where to draw a line of what’s *too much* inspiration.

I have another quote for you, from Jeanne Gang, an architect – “It’s more important to recognise a good idea than it is to author it.” Do you think that collaboration and discovery is an important part of your process?

Yeah. Definitely. When we began work on Crab God, our most recent original title, we put the call out to the whole company for ideas; nobody has a monopoly on good ideas, and we’re always looking to crowdsource and collaborate in that process. 

I think that good ideas are very rare, so part of our collaboration is generating a *lot* of ideas, and scrutinizing them as soon as possible, to avoid ideas not working out down the line.

So we are very oriented towards iterative development, and that extends to design and pre-production – whenever we’re designing a new system or mechanic, we’re always asking “How are we going to validate this”, “How do we make sure our assumptions are correct?”, “how can we be confident that we’re on the right path?” So in game development, collaboration is crucial – it’s very rare for one person to be able to do development, art, sales, promotion, administration – there are so many different components that it’s by necessity that we collaborate with people who have very different mindsets.

Stereotypically at least, programmers and artists have very different mindsets and communication styles, and getting everyone on the same page is a skill that can be practised and honed.

Do you think your studio's organizational structure helps your project process?

It’s a challenging question to answer because we only have firsthand experience of our own organizational structure, because myself and the other founders have been here since forever – we don’t have a good point of comparison outside of Chaos Theory. That being said, our structure is very flat – myself and my two co-founders are directors and direct managers for the entire team, and we don’t have a layer of middle management, and agree that we don’t want to grow to a level where that becomes necessary.

(I challenge this with the claim on their website – biggest game studio in Australia? The actual claim is "leading game & app studio")

Probably “leading serious games development studio in Australia” because the industry isn’t very big and we’re certainly one of if not the most esteemed. Not the “biggest” by any stretch we’re at 24 people right now, and reckon 25 to 30 is the limit. And we don’t want middle management since we want to stay involved in the process and be hands-on with the tools.

We put in a lot of effort to facilitate that collaboration both internally and externally – our relevant company values are agency, growth and fulfilment, and by that, we mean empowering people to make their own decisions and have an impact on their work, and grow in a supportive and fulfilling environment.

As a result of some of that DNA, we give everybody in the company equal opportunity to make their voices heard – it’s an ever-developing process, we’re not perfect, but I do think we put in the effort.

What challenges you the most these days, then?

I would say lots of little things. Not overwhelming, but having this hands-on approach at today’s team size, there’s always something that has to be resolved. Just think about how often an unexpected crisis might arise in your own life, and multiply it by 25 – I would say there’s something every few weeks, sometimes personal, sometimes professional – but they require time, attention and problem-solving if you want to get to a place where you’re effective in tackling team’s problems. 

What are the ‘big issues’ for you? Is CTG tackling the most important social problems?

For Chaos Theory, we’re doing a lot of work in ocean conservation, and we as a team think it’s incredibly good subject matter for games to tackle – it’s at a confluence of a lot of different issues; climate change, ocean acidification, pollution, plastic waste and nutrient runoff..

(Bleached Az)

It’s also sort of a beautiful, alien environment that’s fascinating and has a lot of opportunities for inspiring game design. You’ve already mentioned Bleached Az and Rainbow Reef, now we’re doing Crab God, like obviously we’ve had a bit of a run with coral reef conservation in games, and we’re still focusing on that. I think there are a lot of big issues in the world that can benefit from game devs, or anyone in a creative field, paying attention to them and discussing and sharing them with others.

I guess due to the niche we’re in we often get approached by specialists in a given field, and that’s really beneficial as it exposes us to new ideas – whether that’s from charities, non-profits, NGOs (we once collaborated with the U.N. World Food Program on a game) and they’re looking at a very different style and scope of problems than we would making games internally.

This may track differently for an Australian studio, but since I’m dealing with cultural narratives and ecosystems I want to make sure I’m integrating Mātauranga Māori into my game respectfully and collaborating wherever necessary with people with indigenous knowledge and whakapapa. Would you say Chaos Theory deals with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islands issues?

I think we could do more, I’ve done mentoring for other indigenous studio founders but we don’t have anybody who’s indigenous in our team, or locals whom we are in strong contact with, and I think to contribute effectively to those issues you need to develop a language and understanding for working with that community.

Alright, last question – is there any sort of technology that you’re excited for?

I think a lot of the tools we have are being developed to just get better and better, and enable us to do more with the time we have and get them into the hands of people faster, to deliver those meaningful experiences – one thing we’ve always wanted is good in-game voice generation and like, adaptive voiceover since compelling vocal delivery can transform an experience, make it more accessible to a wider group, and I think on the horizon it seems like that’s possible, with translation into different languages. So if we don’t have to build that ourselves, I basically think that could have a strong transformational outcome on our games.

Moa's Ark & Zealandia

https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/moas-ark-1990/series

Moa's Ark (1990s TV series) opening animation. It was during the 90's that scientists formulated the "Zealandia" protocontinent theory and complexity of how species migrated over time, putting the last nail in the coffin of the idea that everyone got a free ride over on a piece of Australia. Going through Aotearoa's natural history doco archives has been a lot of fun.

Hello again! I took a bit of a break in posting long- form updates, but I think there's enough on my mind for a second batch of posts this week. After that there will again just be small updates on the Instagram until May - when I may have some sort of concept media for the sim to show off. For now I'll aim for a focused peek into a couple of aspects of it as usual.

This post is going to be all about the Moa, the species that got me hooked on this project. It's also going to be about species variation, and the tension between scientific accuracy and visual accessibility.

Moa skeletal reconstitutions at Te Papa Tongarewa, Museum of New Zealand.

A couple of interesting facts about the moa;

-We currently classify them as nine species. Here is a full catalog of every time someone thought they'd found a new one:

-Within many species, female moa can be more than twice the size of males (yes, this is one reason so many moa "species" were identified)

-Moa are unique in that they had no wings (not even the kiwi's tiny t-rex stubs) and, thank goodness because so many NZ species can be traced back to evolving from Australian fauna, their closest past relatives are South American tinamous rather than the emu.

-They also got a bad wrap for their past perception as tall, emu- like, big dumb grass grazers. Actually, while they're nowhere near as smart as multi-sense-foraging kiwi, they could identify and feast on a whole variety of twigs, herbs, leaves and berries - most of which were found in the more common forest than grassland.

This is why they have a bulky build and head-forward posture (until kinda recently, museum curators tended to give them that tall, emu/giraffe like posture, even adding extra vertebrae for show.)

Whanganui Regional Museum (This isn't close to the worst examples)

So; how do I even begin to approach the scope, as well as potential uncertainty, of data we have on the Moa?

Here's one way: Oversimplification!

Screenshots from Godot editor & runtime previews for compatibility (web) mode and forward+ (basically more shaders) renderer. The camera is RTS- style; getting the runtime shots was a bit finnicky.

I've started to build low-poly models in Blender for the fauna, which in the future I'd love to rig for animation and get super technical with appearance variation. For now I'll focus on the system for placing them in the right biome and basic pathing behaviour, and the Moa will be a North Island giant moa based vaguely off this model for an AR national park exhibit: https://moaparkotorohanga.wordpress.com/2014/07/08/a-collection-of-moa-feedback-from-trevor-worthy-and-lizzy-perrett/

While I'm not working directly on the simulator for the next while, I am building this 2D tool to represent the moa's species variation; it is *incredibly* helpful to have just set up a system where I can add and edit instances of a broader Moa "class", and I'm looking forward to giving each species its visual character (the main creative liberty I'll be taking is colour coding from grey to brown to communicate which of New Zealand's islands each species populated, as well as their preferred biome (there's 3 main ones: subalpine mountain, wet podocarp forest, dry forest/ lowland)

Moa "collection" project at time of writing.

If this exercise has highlighted anything though, it's just how difficult it is to reduce life's complexities to a single shape that represents a single numeric value. Those who read my last posts may remember that any given moa species' size may have varied over time and with temperature, (generally bigger during ice ages and smaller out of them) along altitude, (generally bigger and bulkier higher up) and just within species based on how they adapted to any given place. Not to mention the relatively massive lady moa.

And since we're only working with what's left of them all - the only intact gizzard samples proving that whole diet theory, and most of the remains we have to work with, are those found in Pyramid Valley in Canterbury (a swamp with surrounding mosaic of vegetation and forest) - who knows how to truly depict what life was like tens of thousands of years ago.

From the Moa book by Quinn Berentson

A very cursed JavaScript "spreadsheet".

So, very long-winded post. I hope you found something interesting within! Something that made you think about nature's craziness maybe. I meant to get across just how much there is to scientific communication, and I barely touched on how I aim to keep the overall narrative in focus (or basically be aware of it.)

I can't wait to work on this more collaboratively, with folks who really know their stuff about ecology and the cultural aspects of Aotearoa - I think the potential for collaboration and education is what's keeping me going with this project.

Until next time ! - here's some of my highlights from a trip to the Zealandia ecosanctuary.

Kia hora te marino

Kia whakapapa pounamu te moana

Hei huarahi mā tātou i te rangi nei

Aroha atu, aroha mai

Tātou i a tātou katoa

Hui e! Tāiki e!

May peace be widespread

May the sea be like greenstone

A pathway for us all this day

Let us show respect for each other

For one another

Imagining an ecosystem

The last part of this post is my summary of some research into the late Quarternary period - that's basically everything post the shift from the Pleistocene into the Holocene 12,000 years ago - though I'll also be thinking about much more zoomed-out, evolutionary timeframes going far back into the Pleistocene.

A big feature I want to implement in Rule of Birds is the ability to see real-time activity of life in the sim, but also broader shifts happening over thousands and even millions of years. We'll get to that.

There will also be a couple more code examples, since a few things I learned seemed like they could be represented really well with basic algorithms. We will also get to that!

My best source of information so far has been this book. Incredibly helpful, well written for how scientific it is and pretty up to date.

Notes on co-evolution

One pretty cool thing I picked up was a deeper understanding of this plant you might have seen if you've spent any amount of time in Aotearoa:

This is a pretty "branch-y" example, but these are one of many plants in the Muehlenbeckia genus, also known as Maidenhair. (side note: NZ native copper butterflies love them!) They evolved specifically in response to Aotearoa's isolated conditions, and their twigs branch at wide angles and mat over each other super densely. This >90* branching is called divarication.

There's a whole lot of debate to be had about why this is, and it's a prevalent belief that it was to fight back on how Moa tended to nibble on them. It could also be because of the harshness of the climate.

Now, this branching makes me think of a super fun coding concept called "recursion", which means running a process that contains instructions to run the same process. like a mirror reflecting a mirror reflecting a mirror, and the infinity only ends when you tell it to.

Recursive branching algorithms tell a line to break into two at a given angle, reducing in size by a set amount each time. As you'd expect, these smaller branches keep curling out, potentially never really stopping. The below GIF illustrates how recursive branching looks different as the angle of branching changes.

Another interesting thing I read was the connection between terrain elevation, and the size of Moa that found their niche in a given place.

Based on the size of excavated skeletons, scientists found that larger Moa tended to dwell at higher elevations. (this was not the only factor, this is not a perfect rule) But simplifying, a direct relationship between one set of data and another can be coded with a "map".

here's a simplified version of how you would "map" a height to the size of an object, with a base minimum for the object's size.

Potential major simulation events

The last point I want to focus on is how changes in an environment open and close ecological niches, which can mean a place becomes uninhabitable to a given species. I'm sure this is a familiar concept to anyone living in industrialized society.

quoting The Lost World of the Moa, "Periodic forest destruction by volcanoes [...] has resulted in a vegetation pattern that has shifted for thousands of years." This idea of massive events radically altering the simulation, and having this result in complex and diverse changes in plant life - inextricably affecting animal life, is the main reason I want to add an evolutionary timescale mode.

This doesn't just happen due to major weather events, either - you may think the gargantuan Haast's Eagle must have evolved over hundreds of millions of years to achieve its prehistoric size, but recent evidence suggests that its closest relative is Australia's little eagle. It could well be that a comparably tiny bird found its way over the ditch - and because of the sheer abundance of Moa that had no natural predators - grew drastically in size over just a few million years, to take their place as apex predator.

(How a giant eagle came to dominate ancient New Zealand, Bryce Upholt, Knowable Mag 9/3/2022)

It's because of this that when the Māori people hunted the Moa to extinction around the 13th century, the Haast's eagle followed suit; it had invaded the landscape and changed to fill a Moa- shaped niche, and when that niche was closed, it could survive no longer. These are the sorts of evolutionary epics that could be told with good digital simulation, and they highlight the role we as humans have to be mindful of the ecological niches we depend on.

Ka mua, ka muri. Walking backwards into the future.

Birds of a feather ...

So before we jump into all the specific bird behaviour I want to simulate, here's a coding exercise I did a while ago that demonstrates a principle aptly called "flocking".

It requires writing a "class" (basically a code template) for an entity, in this case a bird, which is represented by a vector (that's a direction with a magnitude, for those who don't remember high school physics) in what for my purposes here is a 2D space.

Nerds like me refer to these entities that exist in a flocking context "boids." Craig Reynolds circa 1986 is the guy to blame for that one.

The important point about how boids exist within a flock is that their behaviour is defined by three properties; alignment, cohesion and separation.

𝚊𝚕𝚒𝚐𝚗𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝 : 𝚋𝚊𝚜𝚎𝚍 𝚘𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚟𝚎𝚕𝚘𝚌𝚒𝚝𝚢 𝚟𝚎𝚌𝚝𝚘𝚛𝚜 𝚘𝚏 𝚘𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝚋𝚘𝚒𝚍𝚜 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗 𝚊 𝚋𝚘𝚒𝚍'𝚜 𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚌𝚎𝚙𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚛𝚊𝚍𝚒𝚞𝚜, 𝚝𝚠𝚎𝚊𝚔 𝚟𝚎𝚕𝚘𝚌𝚒𝚝𝚢 𝚝𝚘 𝚖𝚊𝚝𝚌𝚑.

𝚌𝚘𝚑𝚎𝚜𝚒𝚘𝚗 : 𝚊 𝚜𝚒𝚖𝚒𝚕𝚊𝚛 𝚙𝚛𝚒𝚗𝚌𝚒𝚙𝚕𝚎, 𝚝𝚠𝚎𝚊𝚔 𝚝𝚊𝚛𝚐𝚎𝚝 𝚙𝚘𝚜𝚒𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚝𝚘 𝚖𝚘𝚟𝚎 𝚝𝚘𝚠𝚊𝚛𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚘𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚊𝚕𝚕 𝚙𝚘𝚜𝚒𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚘𝚏 𝚗𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚋𝚢 𝚋𝚘𝚒𝚍𝚜.

𝚜𝚎𝚙𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 : 𝚊 𝚗𝚎𝚐𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚏𝚘𝚛𝚌𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚖𝚘𝚟𝚎 𝚊 𝚋𝚘𝚒𝚍'𝚜 𝚙𝚘𝚜𝚒𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚊𝚠𝚊𝚢 𝚏𝚛𝚘𝚖 𝚗𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚋𝚢 𝚋𝚘𝚒𝚍𝚜. 𝙸𝚗 𝚖𝚘𝚛𝚎 "𝚌𝚘𝚕𝚕𝚎𝚌𝚝𝚒𝚟𝚎" 𝚏𝚕𝚘𝚌𝚔𝚜, 𝚜𝚎𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚊𝚜 𝚊 𝚜𝚖𝚊𝚕𝚕 𝚊𝚖𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚝 𝚝𝚘 𝚜𝚝𝚘𝚙 𝚋𝚘𝚒𝚍𝚜 𝚘𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚕𝚊𝚙𝚙𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚎𝚊𝚌𝚑 𝚘𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚋𝚞𝚖𝚙 𝚘𝚏𝚏 𝚎𝚊𝚌𝚑 𝚘𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝚘𝚛𝚐𝚊𝚗𝚒𝚌𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚢.

Another important tidbit is that I can code in the radius that a boid sees the other boids around it and decides to act according to these collective-focused properties. I'm realising now that the perception radius for separation should generally be the smallest of the three.

This being said; here's the flocking exercise, based off of code created by the wonderful Dan Shiffman of the Coding Train YouTube channel. Please check this guy's stuff out if you want to learn p5, processing, or coding for design in general!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhjuuHl6qHM

I changed the code up a bit for the style, added some buttons and sliders so you can mess with the values, and set the defaults for how I imagine the extinct Moa bird would have acted - quite independent, with a subtle alignment drive, and a little more separation than cohesion. This resulted in them seeming to follow the same direction when two boids meet each other at a similar enough velocity, and "scrambling" amongst themselves a bit when more than two or three boids run into each other. Since these rules govern collective behaviour, this individualistic leaning was a challenge - boids are fundamentally social entities and follow a constant velocity on their own!

All in all, really interesting principles for how simulated groups of creatures can act. I think I'm going to jump straight into a game engine space from here! Have fun spamming the +boid button, ad feel free to steal my code to go outside of the limited variables I've given you within runtime.

Okie. Coding brain deactivate now.

Kia Ora, Te Ao!

Hello, World! It's official - Robbie has a tumblr now. Absolutely unfathomable. Honestly, it's mostly because it was this or Wordpress (or a more obscure indie dev forum) and this seemed the most accessible and quirky. I'm sure this won't lead to another awful endless scrolling habit. Any advice for the visual side of things is warmly received! I want this blog to be a fun part of the week, because a lot of fun will be had developing RoB. Just realised that acronym happens to be my name. Could be worse.

Okay! Now that the initial ramble into the void is out of the way, it's time to get into the c o n c e p t.

This tumblr is a devlog for my NZ ecosystem simulator currently titled "rule of birds", which I will be working on for the next 8 weeks as part of Blackbird Foundation's "Protostars" program. This means a weekly check-in with the other creatives in the program, the organizers at Blackbird, and a post for all of you here.

I'm breaking this week's post into 3 sections just to cover the bases;

01.1 -a bit about my creative practice and how it led to this project

01.2 -a discussion of "flocking" in programming (using p5.js)

01.3 -a discussion of NZ natural history

So here's the intro post, where I ramble about myself for a sec.

So! basically, I specialize in spatial design, I love working with anything nature-related, and I want to make a video game.

Lately I've been on a tangent based around art in NZ's cultural context - the design principles behind whakairo (Maori woodcarving) and how their composition conveys meaning, how histories of spirituality, tribal and colonial relations affected design, and my own art interpreting my natural surroundings with photography and charcoal drawing. I can neither confirm nor deny whether there will be an art zine compiling a wee bit of this work on the community table at the Whanganui Zinefest this Saturday.

That tangent branched off into a focus on natural history that's the keystone of rule of birds. My motivation for focusing on an ecosystem simulator is to articulate a basis for the sort of games I want to come out of Aotearoa. The sim will be the proof of concept - and I suppose this blog will be the manifesto.

I feel like there's a massive demand for games exploring NZ history - like, imagine a big-budget maori-led release set in pre-colonial time, with all the unique aspects of survival, resource management and day to day activity that involved - or an assassin's creed type action game based during the time of Te Kooti. It goes unsaid that Kupe is one of the best parts of Sid Meier's Civilization VI - iykyk.

What I think separates a good game from a great one is how alive the virtual world feels - rather than being led through an a-to-b progression of events presented in the same visual style I've seen countless times before, if the world can react in a dynamic way, and the details in the background are crafted to feel organic and immersive, I'm going to want to stop and wander off the beaten track that an objective marker may be pointing me towards.

The last game that caught my attention in this way - and coincidentally the one that made me want to put my coding knowledge to the test with gamedev - was, of course, Rain World. To everyone who knows me, I'm sure you're surprised I've made it three paragraphs without bringing this game up. I'm not going to go into too much detail here, because there is *a lot*, but key points are you are one creature among many scavenging for food in a brutal biomechanical ecosystem, hibernating between cycles of cataclysmic rain, and the game plays like basically nothing else due to how the coded behaviour of every entity in the world follows its own logic that has much more to do with its own survival than the experience of you as a player.

Here's a nice little illustration of the physics behind a movement-sensing tentacle monster, to give a sort of discrete example - but the creatures that act according to behavioural karma systems and the dynamics of how the different lizards scuffle and coordinate with each other is worth looking into too, if this is your thing.

(Source: GDC, Curious Archive)

Now, I really want to jump into some of this behavioural coding stuff, so I'm just going to move on to collecting things for the next post - hope this has been an interesting read! if you somehow found this page in your tumblr algorithm, welcome! I'll also be posting bits on the instagram page @robbiek_devlogs and you can check out my other work on my main insta @robbiek_art

Hei kōnā mai,

Robbie K

Next up: simulation in coding, natural history research post #1