4.3. Building Agents

Now that Heatbugs have been defined, the model swarm needs to create them. This code fragment is from the buildObjects method on HeatbugModelSwarm.


// A loop to create a bunch of heatbugs.
for (i = 0; i < numBugs; i++) 
 {
  Heatbug * hbug;
  int idealTemp, outputHeat;

  // Choose a random ideal temperature, output heat from the specified
  // range (model parameters).
  idealTemp = [uniformRandom rMin: minIdealTemp Max: maxIdealTemp];
  outputHeat = [uniformRandom rMin: minOutputHeat Max: maxOutputHeat];

  // Create the heatbug, set the creation time variables
  hbug = [Heatbug createBegin: [self getZone]];
  [hbug setWorld: world Heat: heat];
  hbug = [hbug createEnd];

  // Add the bug to the end of the list.
  [heatbugList addLast: hbug];

  // Now initialize the rest of the heatbug's state.
  [hbug setIdealTemperature: idealTemp];
  [hbug setOutputHeat: outputHeat];
  [hbug setX: [uniformRandom rMax: worldXSize] // random position
         Y: [uniformRandom rMax: worldYSize]];
}
    

The details of this code are best explained in reading the documentation for the libraries and the heatbugs demo application itself. Essentially, we first generate two random numbers: an ideal temperature and an output heat for the new Heatbug. We then create the Hheatbug itself with createBegin and fill in the required parameters of world and heat. Once those are set, we can send createEnd to the Heatbug and it is finished being created. After it's done being created we add it into a list of Heatbugs in the model and set a few parameters on it like the ideal temperature and the initial position.