welcome to

Office hours

Alexander Repenning: ecot 826, 10am, Tuesdays

Clayton Lewis: tbd

Announcements

If you like to have access to lab: send me email (subject “csci4830”) with your Buff oneCard#

Grad students: if you are interested in an RA position overlapping with education game design types of issues let me know: we can talk a bit more after class

Homework: don’t just upload to GOPR: TEST!

Objectives

Theory: connecting Learning/Engagement with Flow

Programming: Agent-Based Programming Hands on: exploring & debugging Agents

Theory: connecting Learning/Engagement

with Flow

Agent-Based Programming

The ZEN of agent:

you must become the agent

Example: bubble sort

How to make an agent-based bubble sort?

Actions & Conditions

You don’t need to make complete programs: try what conditions/actions do using the test button (or drag and drop on Mac)

Use Explain

Triggers

Invoke methods at specific times

Methods

A method is a list of rules Rule order is important

Invoke a method spatially via Make action Use Broadcast to trigger methods in agents

anywhere in the worksheet Implemented as method in Java

Agent attributes

An agent can have any number of attributes Java equivalent: member variables

Use Agent Attributes tool (or ? Tool on Mac) to inspect values

Use <attributename>[<direction>] to spatially access other agents’ attributes E.g., age[left]

~<attributename> to print/say Map action to visualize as color Plot action to … plot

Simulation Properties

Variables global to entire simulation (including multiple workheets)

Need to use @<propertyname> syntax in formulas

Art hints

You can use backgrounds: e.g, Fish Bowl Import images

via Google image search Caution: many images will not look when scaled back

Photoshop To make people: use Poser, e.g, Soccer

To make roads, wires, rivers, mazes… use duplication scripts