I hope that this text can be read in a standard text editor.

This note will hopefully explain what the ant model is doing. 

Unlike most readme.txt files, I want you to run the model first 
and see if you can see what is going on before you see the rules!!

You need the Gen*.exe file in the same directory as the egavga.BGI file to run it...


The red dots are adult ants known as slaves, they can breed if they are 
old enough and have bumped into another slave. slaves can be eaten by 
hunters if they bump into one!

The gestation period for a pregnant slave is variable but may be 
a substantial part of a slaves lifespan, which is also variable.  

A pregnant slave gives birth to bugs which are green, bugs cannot move far 
from where thay are born.  When they are old enough, they become cubs.

Cubs are blue and they go to the north where their nursury area is, 
they are reasonably safe here but may still be eaten by a hunter.

Cubs eventually become slaves, they now travel the world and when old enough 
may meet another nice slave and start a family......

Hunters roam the World. They can only SEE bugs and have limited eye sight .
They will look for the nearest bug and go for it.  

Hunters can breed only if 
        1. They are old enough
        2. They have eaten
        3. They bump into another hunter

This is just a start.......

I plan to give the hunters variable eyesight and inteligence so that 
successful hunters who breed may pass on genes to their offspring.
 The attributes of eyesight and IQ will be subject to crossover during
 mating  

A hunter with good eyesight will see bugs in the distance but while 
journeying to get to his meal, with poor intelligence he may pass 
other later arriving bugs that are closer to him.

This is not implemented at present and is a major dissapoinment to me.

There are still code bugs in the program which cause it to crash if 
the memory is exhausted.  This is evading solution at present.



The other .exe file in this zip is gena-b.exe

Here a number of ants all start from a single point and try to get to
another single point.   Their journey is obstructed by a circle that 
they HAVE to go round.   The demo simply illustrates the 'apparent'
sense of purpose that a totally deterministic algorithm has given the 
little fellows. 

 No AI no GA, least I dont think so!

What I want to do next is give them a bit of both


Cooments please to MC@wandana.demon.co.uk

Regards Jim