A-MOS (A-World Application) (14) November 23 2004

Description

A-MOS was a simple experiment over a weekend i May 2003 on Artificial Life/World algorithms

It is a small C++ application that runs under Windows NT/98/2000/XP. It creates a small 170x170 map with natural resources and food then introduces 1 to 6 tribes and then proceeds to watch them as they give birth, go to war, steal and build cities. This all happens in a very abstracted fashion mind you. Never the less, the basic concept could be expanded out into an actual A-Life game if you so desire.

A-LIFE/GAME FRAMEWORK
If you're interested in such things but not a very good programmer, then you should know this can serve as the framework to build other A-Life or Gaming experiments. The complete C++ source code is included. Among other features, it uses a simple but fast flicker-free double-buffered DIB to render all the graphics. Additionally, it plays a few sounds for announcement purposes (such as entire tribes dying off).

It has little in the way of internal documentation, but I do tend to pride myself on writting clean, easy to understand code. :)

SHORT-CUT KEYS
1-6 : Changes number of tribes
BACKSPACE : Resets sim
PAUSE : Pauses sim
TAB : Resumes sim
C : Cities on
ALT-C : Cities off
X : Carry on
ALT-X : Carry off
W : War on
ALT-W : War off
R : Rebellion on
ALT-R : Rebellion off
H : Herd decisions on
ALT-H : Herd decisions off
SCROLL : WrapAround on
ALT-SCROLL : WrapAround off
INSERT : Fortune
DELETE : Disaster
HOME : Super-Fortune
W : Allow Wastelands on (due to starvation. war still causes.)
ALT-W : Wastelands off
CTRL-O : Migration OUTWARD
CTRL-I : Migration INWARD
CTRL-A : Migration AGGRESSION
CTRL-C : Migration CENTER
CTRL-H : Migration HELTER SKELTER (global round-robin)
CTRL-P : Migration OFF PATH (local round-robin)

Platform Specifications

FREEWARE A-World Application
Windows NT/98/ME/2000/XP EXE (with complete C++ source code)
Athlon 700mhz or better suggested.

Version History

• V5
  

  v5
  fixed the migration bug. now the paterns are very different. in default mode, it seems that tribes naturally start to pick up a swirling pattern of birth/migration. this causes wave after wave of expansion to be thrown out.

• V4
  

  v4 Sunday.
  Fixed several bugs and added a few more menu options. I really should change the herd-migration routines to use a bresham line alg to get rid of the artifacting, but I really just dont have any more time to fool with it now. maybe later.

• V3
  

  v3 Saturday. May 2003.
  First public release. The code is very... NEW is a good way to describe it. It's literally only something fun to do friday night/saturday afterall.

• V2
  

  v2 Friday. I miss version 2 (Friday night's) because a serious bug in it caused a directional bias producing some very lovely "cloud formations" to be generated.

[Manual friendly version]