I asked Craig if he had any good Boids links, and he dug these up! (Plus a few more I found.)

https://web.archive.org/web/19990117095925/https://http1.bru...

>Craig Reynolds' Boids

>"The motion of a flock of birds is... simple in concept yet is so visually complex it seems randomly arrayed and yet is magnificently synchronous. Perhaps most puzzling is the strong impression of intentional centralised control. Yet all evidence indicates that flock motion must be merely the aggregate result of the actions of individual animals, each acting solely on the basis of its local perception of the world." - Craig Reynolds

[...]

>References: "Artificial Life : The Quest for a New Creation" - Steven Levy

https://books.google.nl/books/about/Artificial_Life.html?id=...

Steve Levy's page on his "Artificial Life" book (with glorious 1997 web site design):

https://web.archive.org/web/19981202151154/http://www.echony...

Tal Cohen's Bookshelf: Artificial Life: The Quest for a New Creation / Steven Levy

http://neuro.bstu.by/ai/To-dom/My_research/failed%201%20subi...

Bruce Sterling. Artificial life.

http://lib.ru/STERLINGB/f_sf_04.txt

Half Life Wiki: Boid

https://half-life.fandom.com/wiki/Boid

>A "Boid" is a virtual entity used in "Boids", an artificial life program simulating the behavior of birds or fish in their flocks or schools, respectively (with each other, as well as their environment), developed at Symbolics Inc. in 1986 by Craig Reynolds, an artificial life and computer graphics expert, and named "steering behavior".[1] The source code has been released a few years after 1986, allowing the creation of many variants since then, including Valve's creature (that even resembles the original Boids by Reynolds). It is also implemented in the free C++ library OpenSteer, designed to help construct steering behaviors for autonomous characters in games and animation.

>The term "Boid" is the abbreviation of "birdoid" ("like a bird"), as the program rules applied equally to simulated flocking birds and schooling fish. It was also inspired by a scene from Mel Brooks' 1968 film The Producers where the playwright's landlord complained about his keeping pigeons on the roof, referring to them as "boids", or "bird" in a stereotypical New York accent. The term also linked up with the ellipsoid-based 3D modeling tool by Tom Duff at the Graphics Lab of New York Institute of Technology named "soids".[2] Therefore, in regard of the source of the creature's name, its proper in-universe name remains unknown.

Alvy Ray Smith used Tom Duff's "soids" (short for "ellipsoids") for Chromagnon:

http://alvyray.com/Art/Chromagnon.htm

>I modeled the skeletal hands from cylinders and spheres, using Tom's "soids" program.

Roadmap-Based Methods for Flocking Motion with Obstacles

https://www.cs.umd.edu/~mount/Indep/Kevin/Webpage/index.htm

>It was also inspired by a graphics modelling and rendering system by Tom Duff when he was at the Computer Graphics Lab of the New York Institute of Technology. It used ellipsoids as its primitive shape and was called "soids".

Craig Reynolds Boids page

https://web.archive.org/web/19981202064632/http://www.hmt.co...

>Boids: Background and Update, by Craig Reynolds.

>[You need to be using an Java-enabled browser to see this demo.]
(more information about this applet is available)

>In 1986 I made a computer model of coordinated animal motion such as bird flocks and fish schools. It was based on three dimensional computational geometry of the sort normally used in computer animation or computer aided design. I called the software boids.

[...]

Brunel University Artificial Intelligence Site / Artificial Life / Boids / Three "Boid" Term Sources

https://web.archive.org/web/20010505042228/http://www.brunel...

https://web.archive.org/web/20010224013859fw_/http://www.bru...

https://web.archive.org/web/20001004064622/https://http1.bru...

>I have learned (on extremely good authority!) that there were actually three sources of the term 'boid'! Here they are:

>"Boid" was an abbreviation of "birdoid", as his rules applied equally to simulated flocking birds, and schooling fish.

>It was also inspired by a graphics modelling and rendering system by Tom Duff when he was at the Computer Graphics Lab of the New York Institute of Technology. It used ellipsoids as its primitive shape and was called "soids".

>Finally, there was a Mel Brooks film called The Producers starring Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder which contained a scene where the playwright's landlord complained about his keeping pigeons on the roof ("You used to be able to sit on the stoop like a normal person, but not any more, 'cause of da BOIDS. Dirty, lousy, stinkin' BOIDS")