Index of contents:
The purposes of SimEco
The generation of food
Individuals' behavior
Species
Settings
More info
The purposes of SimEco
SimEco Project was born as an engineering graduate thesis and it has two main purposes.
The first one is to develop a complete software which can simulate many natural scenarios such as the growth of a population without any disturbance, the competition of a population divided in species or the dynamic of prey and predators.
The second purpose of SimEco is to realistically simulate populations which you want to study the dinamics of. The realism of simulations is based on their overlapping with mathematical models.
The generation of food
The software generates the food at the given percentage of free cells in the simulated world.
The generation of food is based on the following formula:
๐(๐ก) = ๐พ (S − ๐ฅ(๐ก) − ๐ฆ(๐ก))
where ๐(๐ก) is the total food quantity at ๐ก time, ๐พ is the percentage of food, S is the world's surface, ๐ฅ(๐ก) is the population of prey and ๐ฆ(๐ก) is the population of predators.
The food has the same probability to grow all over the world, but it has different probability to be eaten depending on its position. *
*This cause the uneven distribution of food, which is one of the notable configurations. This one and other notable configurations are explained here.
Individuals' behavior
Individuals' behavior has been coded emulating basic natural instincts.
Every agent uses its vision field to explore the world around it. If it sees some food, it will go after it, otherwise it will randomly move to look for it.
If it doesn't find some food, it is going to die. Indeed every move brings a loss of energy for
the individual, but when the food is eaten, it brings new energy to the agent, so it can survive longer.
The following picture easily explains the individuals' behavior:
Species
Both prey and predators are divided into four different species: R, F, V, S.
Every letter stands for a specific skill which is predominant in that species. The skills are as follows:
- Resistance (the ability to lose less energy at every move)
- Food Efficiency (the ability to get more energy from food)
- Vision (the ability to see farther)
- Speed (the ability to move faster)
So, for example individuals belonging to the R species will have Resistance as the main skill, individuals which have Vision as the predominant skill will belong to the V species, and so on.
There is one more skill which doesn't determine the species of individuals:
- Birth Rate (the ability to easily reproduce)
Settings
World's Settings: choose the world's size and its geometry, which can be flat (a delimited square) or toroidal (the borders can be crossed, so the surface is closed).
Food's Settings: select the percentage of food (according with the previous equation) and its distribution between high energy food and low energy food.
Populations' Settings: these settings are the most interesting, so it is worth to explain them more specificately.
Using these settings you can choose the initial number of prey and predators and their division in species. Populations are equally divided between the species you have selected.
Moreover every species can be customized throught the Advanced Settings for both prey and predators.
Every interval is equal to 1 skill point. So if you assign 8 to Speed, that skill will use 8 skill points.
The only skill which doesn't use skill points is the Birth Rate, in fact it doesn't coincide with any species and it is separated from other skills.
First of all select the number of skill points you want to assign to both prey and predators. Then examine the values or modify them to create your customized population.
Select the "Remember these values" checkbox to save the current settings for next sessions of SimEco. If the checkbox isn't checked, the values will be saved only for the current session.
More info
As mentioned in the first paragraph, the SimEco Project was born as an engineering graduate thesis.
If you want to know more about the project, such as the mathematical models based on which is confirmed the realism of simulations, or the structure of the software or also the analysis of the software's data, download the following .pdf files.
The english version of the thesis was automatically translated, so the italian version remains the
official one to refer to in cause of any ambiguity.
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