62 lines
2.4 KiB
Markdown
62 lines
2.4 KiB
Markdown
## What is MicroWorld
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MicroWorld is a rule driven cellular automaton.
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### Representation of the world
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A world is represented as a
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sequence of sequences (to represent a two dimensional array) of cells. A cell is
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represented as a map having at least the following properties:
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* :x The X offset of this cell within the array (should not be tampered with).
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* :y The Y offset of this cell within the array (should not be tampered with).
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* :state The current state of this cell, represented as a clojure key; initially :waste.
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As currently initialised all cells have two additional properties:
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* :altitude Altitude of this cell. Initially 1. Currently not used.
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* :fertility Soil fertility of this cell. Initially 1. Increases under climax
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forest; later, will decrease under ploughland, may increase under pasture.
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Rules can add any additional properties to cells that you like; the current
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'natural-rules' rule-set adds properties for the populations of deer and of
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wolves.
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### Representation of rules
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Rules are just ordinary Clojure functions (can be anonymous functions, and in the current
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rule-sets they are) which take two arguments, a cell and a world, and return
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either nil (indicating the rule did not fire), or a new cell which should have
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the same :x and :y properties as the cell passed in. Any other properties can
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be different.
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## What is MicroWorld for
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The underlying intention is to crudely model the evolution of human settlement
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in a landscape, but also to act as a learning environment to teach ideas about
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software and about ecology.
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## User interface
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The MicroWorld user interface is currently just an auto-refreshing web page,
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containing an HTML table. Each cell in the world is represented by a cell in
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the table. Each HTML cell has a class whose name is derived from the state of
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the world cell, and contains an image whose filename is derived from the state
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of the world cell.
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The 'state' classes are defined in a CSS file 'states.css', which should be
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edited when you add additional states. Image files should be 32x32 pixels and
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should be stored in the directory 'img/tiles', but at this stage I haven't
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created any.
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## Future plans
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### Run in the browser
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Currently the simulation runs on the server and only the display is in the
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browser.
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### Rule language
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It would be good to have a near-English rule parser to make rules easier for
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children to add and modify. |