Simulation

Self Replication v2

This is my second version of a Self Replication application.

This time the little guys are on the hunt for food and when they feed they grow in length by one unit, just like the game snake for the old mobile phones. Each ‘snake’ has a unique set of ‘DNA’ which contains the following variables :

  • Speed of Snake : The speed of the snake will decrease as it becomes longer and increase as it shrinks.
  • Starvation Time : When the snake is not eating (looking for more food) the starvation time determines how long it takes before it looses one of it’s ‘units’ and gets shorter. The starvation time is closely linked with the speed of the snake. The faster the snake, the faster it’s unit’s diminish as it uses more energy moving around. A slower snake will use less energy and thus it’s ‘Starvation time’ is considerably longer. When the snake looses it’s final unit it dies and no longer exists.
  • Colour.
  • Digestion Time : How long it takes to convert an item of food into a part of it’s body (a ‘unit’).
  • Pregnancy Time : When a snake reaches a length of 10 units (this will be moved to the DNA in V3) it becomes pregnant and the pregnancy time determines how long it takes before an egg is laid.

When an egg is laid the DNA of the parent snake is transferred to the offspring within the egg. A random number of offspring is produced from each snake within the confines of a minimum and maximum litter boundary. The child snakes are born at a length of 1 unit and immediately need to feed or risk starvation.

Hit ‘SPACE‘ in order to show when the next harvest of food is due, or force it come sooner. Alternatively you can feed an individual area by hitting the ‘Feed Small Area‘ button.

Orbiter V2. Extra functionality.

Thanks for stopping by. So here is my little gravity application. It’s very early in development so don’t be surprised to find bugs, as with all development projects I know how to use it to avoid problems. Click on the image below to launch the app (you’ll need flash player), you can download that from here : http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ .

Here’s a brief tutorial of how to use it. I’ve defaulted some of the values so that it starts at 3% zoom and a large enough orbit line thickness so we can see what’s going on. Before you do anything, turn on the “Show Orbits” check box. Then hit the Load button. This pulls in the starting values for planets.

Diagram to show the orbit when different Y-Velocity is given.

Check out this post for more details on how to use the application : https://danthaiwang.wordpress.com/2010/11/05/pldm-orbiter/

If you’d like to play around with the starting values (that get loaded in via XML) then download the application from here : pldmOrbiterApplication.zip Inside the zip you’ll need to run the index.html. You can manipulate the starting data by editing the XML in the folder ‘saveddata’. Once you’ve saved the file ‘Remove All’ bodies from the stage and then press load again to see your changes.

My goal is to try to get tiny planets orbiting from a long distance away.

Let me know your thoughts. dan@pldm.co.uk

Scale Solar System

http://www.pldm.co.uk/solarsystem/Main.swf

I couldn’t find an interactive correct scale solar system anywhere. So I built one. Not finished yet. Lots more plans for it. If the imagery upsets anyone, please let me know and I’ll delete them. I found all the images via a google image search.

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