applets/friendly.html

   1 <html>
   2 <head>
   3         <title>Friendly Bots</title>
   4         <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../styles.css"/>
   5 </head>
   6 <body>
   7 <div id="content">
   8         <h2>Friendly Bots</h2>
   9         <h3>Agent Algorithm</h3>
  10         <p>
  11                 A friendly agent looks at all the other agents he can see and
  12                 randomly selects one to be his friend. However, he can only make
  13                 another agent his friend if the other agent does not already have
  14                 the agent selected as his friend. The friendly agent then tries
  15                 to move toward his friend by accelerating towards him. The agent
  16                 remembers who his friend is and continues to accelerate towards
  17                 him as long as the friend remains visible. If the agent ever
  18                 loses sight of his friend he simply selects another one at random
  19                 given the selection criteria stated above. If ever a friend
  20                 cannot be found the agent accelerates in a random direction to
  21                 search for one.
  22         </p>
  23         <h4>Pseudocode</h4>
  24         <div class="pseudocode">
  25 <pre>if !haveFriend or friend not in visibleAgents
  26    availableFriends = {}
  27    for all visibleAgents
  28       if visibleAgent.friend != me
  29          availableFriends <-- visibleAgent
  30    friend = selectRandom(availableFriends)
  31 if haveFriend
  32    accelerate towards friend
  33 else
  34    accelerate in random direction</pre>
  35         </div>
  36         <h3>Observed Behavior</h3>
  37         <p>
  38                 Since friendship cannot be mutual, there will never be agents
  39                 accelerating towards each other. An agent's friend will always be
  40                 trying to get to another agent (or moving about randomly searching
  41                 for a friend). What happens is kind of a "love triangle"
  42                 phenomenon where agent A is accelerating towards agent B is
  43                 accelerating towards agent C is accelerating towards agent A.
  44                 When there is enough space for one of these chains they will spin
  45                 around in circles chasing one another. When the chains get bigger
  46                 they tend to look like a snake chasing after his tail with his
  47                 body getting in the way.
  48         </p>
  49         <p>
  50                 Note that if the Agent Sight setting is set too high they tend
  51                 to choose friends that are to far away and the "friendship snakes"
  52                 can get knotted to the point where they can no longer move.
  53         </p>
  54         <h3>The Applet</h3>
  55         <applet archive="../dist/appletbots.jar"
  56                 code="appletbots.friendly.FriendlyApplet"
  57                 alt="Friendly Applet"
  58                 width="600"
  59                 height="450">
  60                 <div>
  61                         If you see this, you need to either enable java, or install the Sun Java
  62                         Virtual Machine in your browser. To do so,
  63                         <a href="http://java.sun.com/getjava/download.html">click here</a>.
  64                 </div>
  65         </applet>
  66         <h3>Source Code</h3>
  67         <ul>
  68                 <li>
  69                         <a href="http://repo.or.cz/w/applet-bots.git?a=blob;f=src/appletbots/friendly/FriendlyApplet.java">FriendlyApplet.java</a>
  70                 </li>
  71                 <li>
  72                         <a href="http://repo.or.cz/w/applet-bots.git?a=blob;f=src/appletbots/friendly/FriendlyAgent.java">FriendlyAgent.java</a>
  73                 </li>
  74         </ul>
  75         <a href="../" class="return">Back to the Applet Bots Home</a>
  76 </div>
  77 <div class="official">
  78         The official version of this file is at <a href="http://applet-bots.sourceforge.net/applets/friendly.html">applet-bots.sourceforge.net</a>
  79         <a href="http://sourceforge.net" class="sf-logo"><img border="0" alt="SourceForge.net Logo" src="http://sflogo.sourceforge.net/sflogo.php?group_id=205988&amp;type=1"/></a>
  80 </div>
  81 </body>
  82 </html>