The Thing Simulator

This simulator/game was created for fun and for educational purposes. As a big fan of the movie “The Thing” (1982) I always enjoyed the computer analysis perfomed by Blair (one of the Outpost #31 crew members).

I decided to recreate that analysis on a modern computer. I tried to be as close to what can be seen in the original footage as I could. Thanks to that you can now feel a bit like Blair seeing how the alien cell is taking over terrestial cells. 

At first my intention was to create only a simplified simulation - a simple program (one screen) that would immediately display a few interacting cells. It could function as a screensaver. While developing I was coming up with many more ideas and eventually this program "assimilated" all of them. Finally it grew to a fully working simulation with menu system, statistics, music and sound effects.

There are two major differences to what can be seen in the movie:

1. When I was analysing the movie scene I figured there are two different infection methods. I called them phase1 and phase2.  In phase1, an intruder infects a healthy cell. In phase2, an immitation infects another healthy cell. This infection involes a little thing that I started to call an infecting tentacle. I decided to use this effect for both phases, while in the movie this tentacle is only in phase2. I think it's more realistic to have this tentacle in both phases, and I don't know why it wasn't applied in the movie.

2. I introduced the identification description "CELL IMMITATION". There's no such a description in the film. I decided to implement it, because my program is a full simulation and not an animation. After the first infection, the immitation can roam around for quite a while, so to distinguish it from other cells I decided to include this custom description.

The current version is 0.9. 

This application is ready for use and all the features I wanted to have are implemented, but it's in Beta stage, so there will be some updates coming.

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Have fun!

Credits

Detail credits are included in the application under CREDITS menu. But I'd like to refer to music here:

"Blue Sizzle"

"Blue Sizzle" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under 
Creative Commons: 
By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

"Long Note Two"

"LONG NOTE TWO" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under 
Creative Commons: 
By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

"SYMMETRY"

"SYMMETRY" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under 
Creative Commons: 
By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

DISCLAIMER:

The author is not affiliated, associated, authorized, endorsed by, or in any way officially connected with  Universal Pictures or its affiliates. 

The name "The Thing" as well as related names, marks, emblems and images are registered trademarks of their respective owners.