Netlogo tutorial (1.5day workshop)

On Oct, 6th and 7th, 2014, I gave a Netlogo tutorial for the interdisciplinary research cluster on self-organizing systems of the University Klagenfurt.

This 1.5 day workshop at the 2nd Self-organizing retreat in Pörtschach consisted of half a day of presentations and two half days of group work.

You can download:

• the SLIDES: Part 1 (.pptx or .pdf) and Part 2 (.pptx or .pdf),
• the .nlogo programs I provided, and
• the Netlogo simulation environment (free, from Northwestern University)

Netlogo tutorial: more mouse input and File I/O - simple drawing program

In the post on Flygame we already did some file output (we saved our highscore) - today we're going to not only save, but also load a file. And, because it was fun in Flygame we're going to use the mouse to paint on our background. Here goes:

Netlogo tutorial: mouse input, file I/O - Flygame, a simple game

click to enlarge

Today we'll make a simple game and look at mouse input and file I/O. The game's objective is to swat all of the randomly moving flies with your mouse in the least amount of time. When you have swatted all flies, the game is finished and the time used is your score (therefore, a low score is good, a high score means that you were slow catching the flies).

DOWNLOAD the .nlogo file HERE.

Netlogo tutorial: models library and scatterplots - Sugarscape model

Netlogo contains a large models library of well-documented models. You can find it under File -> Models Library. Today we extend the Sugarscape Wealth Distribution Model from File -> Models Library -> Sample Models -> Social Science -> Sugarscape -> Sugarscape 3 Wealth Distribution.
The Info Tab contains an extensive description of the model.

When you play with the sliders you'll find that it's not so easy to understand what is happening. That the wealth distribution becomes more skewed when there are more agents is to be expected - more agents mean that there is relatively less sugar per agent in the environment, so competition becomes more fierce. But why does setting the initial endowment limits to almost the same (say, eg. 24 and 25; they can't be equal) not help? Shouldn't wealth be distributed evenly if all nodes start out on equal terms? Who are those nodes who get rich? To investigate the model in-depth we'll do some scatterplots.

Netlogo tutorial: using lists - Langton's ant multicolor extension

In the last post we considered multiple interacting Langton's ants and used color to distinguish between them. But there is also a multicolor extension to a single Langton's ant and today we will take a look at that. In the original Langton's ant algorithm a patch can be either empty or colored - which basically amounts to 2 colors: color 0 and color 1. In the multicolor extension, this is extended to n colors and works as follows:

Netlogo tutorial: more fun with Langton's ants

In this post we have already considered Langton's ant. Today, let's have a bit of fun and look at the interaction of several Langton's ants (DOWNLOAD the .nlogo file here). The interactions can be quite interesting and colorful.

Netlogo tutorial: Rabbits on grass

Today we are going to look at a simulation where mobile agents interact with some kind of habitat - eg. rabbits eating grass. The habitat can be implemented as patches and the mobile agents as turtles in Netlogo.

Netlogo tutorial: turtle interacting with patches - Langton's ant

Langton's ant needs more than just patches - it is an interaction between a mobile agent (called a turtle in Netlogo) and the patches that make up the floor. The ant follows 2 very simple rules:

Netlogo tutorial: use of Patches - Game of Life

Let's have a look at the use of patches in Netlogo. Patches are the "floor" of the Netlogo space. They are agents and can have a behavior and different colors - they just can't move around. So, using patches is a