Robert Garrett
d1941217c4
Another Boids in Rust
This is my implementation of the Boids flocking algorithm. It is written in Rust and built on the Bevy game engine.
Building & Running
Desktop/native
You'll need a working Rust toolchain, of course. See the rustup site for the basics.
# Install system dependencies
:~$ sudo apt install libasound2-dev libudev-dev pkg-config # Debian 13
:~$ sudo yum install alsa-lib-devel libgudev-devel ppkgconf-pkg-config # Fedora 42
# Build and run
:~$ cargo build --release
:~$ cargo run --release # Or skip the build and only run. Cargo will (re)build as-needed.
Web
This project creates a "static site," meaning a complete deployment of the site is simply copying the output folder onto a webserver. There are two ways to use this.
- A standalone application which can be quickly hosted as-is. This includes the WASM, it's JS glue, and an index.html page.
- A sub-page in a larger website. This is actually the same, but names it's HTML page "boids.html" so consumers (you) can provide their own index.html.
- I'm not using a JS Bundler at this time. If you're familiar with JS development, this probably looks like a dumb way to do it. Sorry about that.
Standalone build:
- Build
make web-standalone - Serve
python3 -m http.server -d ./out - Visit site in browser:
http://localhost:8000
To quickly get a tarball, use make tarball_standalone. If you're trying to build and upload the program somewhere, this may provide a bit of convenience. Compressing it may be a good idea, too.
"Bundle-able" build
For a "bundle-able" build, you'll need to write your own index.html and link to the boids.html file.
Basically, just throw in a hyperlink with <a href="boids.html">Boids</a>
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<!-- your page content, etc -->
<body>
<a href="boids.html">Boids</a>
</body>
<!-- more page content, etc -->
</html>
As mentioned in the option 2 description, I'm not using a JS Bundler. There is no "package.json" or anything to integrate properly with a JS framework. I plan to fix that at some point, but for now there are just a bunch of files to grab.
You can use any HTTP server you like. In the steps above, I'm using the Python3 built-in http.server module; which is NOT recommended for production use. Don't put that on the Internet! Alternatives include Miniserve and BusyBox. The latter of which I'm using in the Docker image.
Web, but as a Docker Container
You'll need a working Docker installation. See the get-docker page for details. The rest of the build and execution is self-contained in the container(s) and will not require additional host tools.
:~$ docker build -t boids-website .
:~$ docker run -it --rm boids-website
You might have to open another terminal to docker kill <the boids container>. It doesn't seem to respond to ctrl+c and I don't plan to figure out why any time soon.
You may also notice that the Dockerfile doesn't call on the Makefile. This is because the Dockerfile predates the Makefile and I haven't updated it to follow the manual process described above. The result is the same, only now it's in a container and using the BusyBox webserver.
Controls
| Input | Effect | | Mouse | The scanner circle is attached to the mouse cursor. Move it to scan boids within the radius. | | Left mouse button | Put scanner into center-of-mass mode | | Right mouse button | Put scanner into average velocity mode |
BUG: On web builds, the right-click action will both switch the scanner mode and open the browser's context menu. You can work around this by closing the menu without left-clicking on the canvas -- click outside the canvas, or use the escape key, etc.