flocking behavior

Is there any way to create a flocking behavior? I feel like this would be especially helpful for army-type games, with lots of troops staying in the same area. In my case, I have a handful of fish I would like to stay together, but not necessarily in the same place with reference to each other.

Any ideas?

Might be able to do this with the pin behaviour. Set one fish to be the leader, then have the others pinned to that leader, offset at different random x/y to give the impression they're bunched up.

There are a couple of C2 plugins. Do a search on flocking or boids.

Might be able to do this with the pin behaviour. Set one fish to be the leader, then have the others pinned to that leader, offset at different random x/y to give the impression they're bunched up.

Yes I have thought of doing this, but I kind of wanted more "freedom" for fish, in my case, to move around. The fish are moving around randomly seemingly swimming as a group, but weaving between each other.

Thank you for the reply!

blackhornet Thanks for the response, but I am using C3, so I am not sure if that would work. If it does...

Maybe have them offset by an offsetX and offsetY variable that changes over time incrementally and have it relative to a leader fish, then move them to that position using lerp.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boids

Fengist that Boid model sounds pretty interesting, thanks for posting it!

Yes thank you Fengist I did find a plugin that uses boids, however, I am not sure how to install it. I was given a zip file and every time I try to install it my computer says there is nothing there, both when it is zipped and unzipped.

If you REALLY want to dig into his model, here's Craig Reynolds homepage with just gobs and gobs of info on his simulation.

red3d.com/cwr/boids