An Adaptive Landscape: Modeling Evolution in Minecraft

About the project

For our Comps project, we modded the #1 best-selling game of all time, Minecraft, adding in simple evolution for both trees and sheep. The goal was to see if Minecraft could be used as a teaching tool to help teach and reinforce evolution and it's complexities through stealth-learning. We used a specific Minecraft modding toolchain called Fabric that allowed us to decode, extend, and modify Minecraft's Java-based source code. We decided to focus on a few select evolutionary sources: mutation, natural selection, and gene flow. Evolution is such a complex topic and with Minecraft there are so many possibilites, that we hope this project will be a launch pad for many Comps projects to come.