attention
Proximity and movement pull focus. Fast nearby motion creates more attention than distant or quiet motion.
signal / live study
CREATUREZERO
How little behavior is required before something feels present?
There is no character model, dialogue, camera, microphone, or language model here. One abstract disturbance has attention, curiosity, familiarity, fear, energy, and short-term spatial memory. Your movement changes those states. Its states decide whether it approaches, waits, remembers, or retreats.
move slowly · rush toward it · leave · return to the same place · or press space to knock
something is resting in the surface / it has not noticed you yet
attention08
curiosity42
familiarity00
fear05
energy78
memoryempty
The three helper controls simulate clear behavioral inputs without permissions: a sudden disturbance, a quiet nearby presence, or absence. Pointer, touch, and keyboard interaction use the same state system.
under the surface
The creature is not a drawing. It is a set of competing needs.
fear
Sudden approach raises fear quickly. Fear can override curiosity and push the disturbance away from you.
curiosity
Quiet nearby presence creates approach pressure when enough energy remains and fear is low.
familiarity
Repeated calm encounters lower the cost of proximity. Familiarity changes future reactions without becoming permanent identity.
memory
A handful of recent spatial encounters decay over time. Returning near a remembered place can attract the presence before new interaction does.
energy
Watching, approaching, and retreating consume energy. Absence allows recovery, preventing perpetual activity.
system
Agency appears when immediate input stops being the only cause.
- renderer
- Canvas 2D / one continuous Warp surface
- state
- attention · curiosity · familiarity · fear · energy
- memory
- up to 8 decaying in-session spatial traces
- input
- pointer · touch · keyboard · explicit behavior controls
- model
- none
- network
- none required for the encounter
- persistence
- none / reset on route exit or reload
- status
- experimental / mobile-first v0
A language model would make this experiment easier to anthropomorphize but harder to evaluate. Version zero intentionally asks a more difficult question: whether temporal behavior, bounded memory, resource limits, and conflicting drives can create perceived presence before language exists at all.