procedural -> modular -> agent based

[fir]

I once wrote on this, but maybe i will
repeat

Im like 'fighting' for 15 years with OOP crap by saying sporadically that it is stupid and bad, I also often say that procedural is solid and cool (hovever probably there could be invented something other here too) modular is cool (l love windows dll-s greatly) and agent based is expected to me to be very cool too

agent bbased paradigm is somewhat researched by some but it is not
presented to much clear and practical afaik, I also on my side research it
a bit (though i dont spend many tme on it i was writing some texts on it)

I once find and wrote here on this group that agent based paradigm can be in fact realized (made) by normal c coding by using dll-s (his was not quite clear before)

I also was describing how it can be done and show basic elements of that
realisation

i also wrote a basic runing example (though im not sure if i posted it then, now i slightlt revrite it and may post it to download and see or test - sorry it is much ugly and basic
but as emmet brown says ;c i got no
time to much improve it (yet))

the basic elements are

1) you code host.exe

this is environment that link to your agents (whose are dll's - each dll is not agent per sef but it is code for a
group of agents of such type; ho0st will call this agent.dll as many times as he wants instantiating N agents of given type )

2) you code agent.dll (or more for separate types)

agent.dll has one entry point (i think it may be called Update() though i call i Run() in my code) this function/method is called in cyclic giving life to given agent - this is
one and only routine that is called on that agent

agent cyclically pools his environment
(methods for that are provoided by host.exe (it showed fortunatelly that exe can export functions too, though to be able to link it from agent dlls i need to build import library for the exe in mingw/gcc)

in my example the api provided are only two functions

__declspec(dllimport) int Move(int dx, int dy);

__declspec(dllimport) int LookAt(int dx, int dy);

one moves agents to adjacent cell on map the second gives info what is on adjacent tile

yhe host has a controll on that methods, for example if one agent
would like to jump more that to +-1,+-1 position form his current
position host can cut it off - this is very important as it provides hard
interface for agents 'abilities',
environment/hosts limits them and that
makes it really fully work at an agent
paradigm rules (it fully provides them, and thats why its so nice imo)

i wrote ugly and simple host (dorry i got no time but i will wrote more good lokking and cool in future i hope)
tthat is 2d soccer field

http://minddetonator.htw.pl/uglyhost.png

throwed a lot of 'balls' here (ball symbols more)

and i also coded two agents blacks and whites (each one in 10 instances) and
code them very simple behaviour, blacks walk in random,


int RunAgentBlack()
{
int dx = rand()%3 - 1;
int dy = rand()%3 - 1;

Move(dx, dy);

return 0;
}


whites look right for a bol if there is ball here they move on that ball pushing it, if no ball at right they are also walk in random


int RunAgentWhite()
{


int dx = rand()%3 - 1;
int dy = rand()%3 - 1;

if(LookAt(1, 0)=='b')
Move(1, 0);
else
Move(dx, dy);


return 0;
}


the app is ugly etc but my purpose was to ilustrate that agent paradigm can be done in c with dlls , can be well done in c with dll and how can be done in c with dlls

this is this app (can be tested on win32, probably will work in wine)

minddetonator.htw.pl/ag.zip

there is compile bat script there
so if someone only have mingw installed it can edit click and compile its own agent behaviours

(that could be used to play in some
agents/bot coding, compare the results
and make some agents science and experience, though i sadly know how lazy people are and do not expect to much from them)

(this post is btw an introduction to tis topic i hope to write more on this after)