tipsybugs 0.05 available!

[Barry McMullin]

By popular demand (ta daa!) I have released:


      *******  tipsybugs v0.05  *******

and Glen, with his customary efficiency, has already
moved it to the anarchy dir:

 ftp://ftp.santafe.edu/pub/swarm/users-contrib/anarchy/


Well, OK, strictly speaking, just two people (not
counting Glen) who saw the very brief demo at SwarmFest
asked me to do this.  I attach the README below.  That
is *all* the documentation there is, or is going to be
(I mean it (;-) I have not reviewed this code remotely
carefully, as this was just a toy application I was
using to try out some radical ideas. I'm trying to
convince Glen to incorporate *some* of these ideas in a
revamped heatbugs, but, in the meantime, caveat
modeller...

- Barry.

=========================================================


Package: tipsybugs v0.05
Author:  Barry McMullin <address@hidden>
Date:    20th February 1997.

This is the README file for the tipsybugs v0.05 source
distribution.


tipsybugs is a *toy* Swarm application, which I have
been using on an ongoing basis to test out various
ideas.  It was never intended for public distribution;
but since a couple of people expressed an interest at
SwarmFest (Feb '97) I'm making this version available.
There is *no* documentation: what you see is what you
get (;-)

tipsybugs models a discrete 2d world in which are
embedded a collection of bugs which are "tipsy":
they all move in more or less rabdom walks around
the space.

The interest (if any!) of this model is in the
implementation of support for a discrete toroidal
space, with mutual exclusion on occupancy, and with the
ability to switch the tiling on the space between
square and hexagonal, and also (in the square tiling)
switch between von Neumann and Moore neighborhoods. It
also prototypes the concept of interacting with a
discrete space via abstract "coordinate" objects rather
than explicit (x,y) or whatever.  Some (though not all)
of the model has thus been made independent of the
dimensionality and the detailed neighborhood structure
of the space.  The model also demonstrates taking all
code associated with displaying *out* of the agents,
and centralising it in the "model swarm"  (if I were
using an "observer swarm" it would have gone there).

I've built this version under Swarm 1.0.0.  It uses the
new random library and, as such, will not work on the
prior beta releases.  Incidentally, I include an
implementation of a Bernoulli distribution layered on
the new random library.  I also include a modified
Raster.m to fix an annoying bug with redisplay of
rasters on certain tcl/tk versions - but that fix will
probably be incorporated into the official 1.0.1 Swarm
release, at which point the version here can, and
should, be dispensed with.

Comments will be gratefully accepted.  General
discussion would best be done via the swarm-support
list.

The package is distributed under the terms of the GNU
GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE, Version 2, June 1991. See the
file LICENCE.TXT for details.

=======================================================