First Evolution-based System!

Exciting times! This might not look like a big deal but it is my first evolutionary system that I built myself, so it is actually a BIG deal for me! I am currently working on a building program solver for my thesis project. It will be a chunk of code based on evolutionary algorithms/principles and it is supposed to have program components as Simple Agents with their requirements as settings, a building volume/envelope as a system domain and analysis data (Solar, CFDwind velocity, Noise/Acoustic data) mapped on the envelope as a reference (target) for the “Agents’” properties. So, it will be randomly initialized and then these Components/Agents will have to iteratively adjust themselves within the building envelope. Well, since I had never dealt with Evolutionary Systems before and they are kind of tough to digest for “mortal” folks like me I decided to start with something a bit simpler. Oh, and also apart from understanding the way the system work I’d also have to dig into the OOP and ideally build a class library (.dll) to solve that. And taking in consideration that I had never done that (I mean, I dealt with OOP only within GH RunScript()), so I figured that I’d practice and see what I can do about it with a simpler system but as well evolutionary based. So, I build a .dll with 4 classes: SystemSettings, Zones, Cells and Agents. Basically the logic behind this thing is that there are 1X1 Cells that define a “pixel” for agent movement. There are Zones (bigger square cells) which centroids act as attractors for the Agents. Zones get their attractor value during the initialization either random within a set range or each of them get the same val. And then, depending on how many Agents are located in each Zone they either decrease their attractor value or increase. Agents are the only guys that are moving. They look for a closest Zone centroid (the distance is not only the distance but (dist*attractVal) so the closet centroid doesn’t mean that the agent will be attracted to it. Well, it is fun to see which zone wins and by tweaking the settings it’s interesting to observe how they affect the whole population. The most important thing is that I actually feel more comfortable dealing with these kind of algorithms and their complexity because in the beginning I thought that my head would explode-it feels like you understand the way it works in theory but you have no clue how to approach it. Plus I got some library building experience (still not much, but hey.. one step at a time). I can share the DLL and GH code if someone is interested. Just let me know.