Thanks John!

After some thought and a limited number of tests, I have decided to use
a similar approach to yours (I have found the true dynamic agent
creation seems to be slow and the operation of the agent creations
affects the other agents quite a bit. ) . What I have done is to use two
data collections to hold agents. At start, I produce more than enough
agents and put them in the "outside collection" and when I need to
"create" agents, instead of creating them on the fly, I just move the
agent from "outside collection" to the "inside collection" and when an
inside agent needs to be removed, I just do the opposite and the agent
again is ready to be  recycled "recreated" again.

I think it should be computationally more efficient to have two data
collections because we only need to check  the "inside agent collection"
when network is called for.

Ming

 

From: MASON Multiagent Simulation Toolkit
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of John McManus
Sent: Friday, March 04, 2011 9:15 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Dynamic Agent Creation

 

I create lots of dead agents, all linked up to portrayals and the
schedule, each with the line "If (!alive) return:" up top in the step
method. I just bring them to life or kill them as needed. I find this is
much faster and simpler than actually creating new agents on the fly
when thousands of agents are coming and going rapidly on a desktop. May
or may not work best in your case. 

 

John

 

 

From: MASON Multiagent Simulation Toolkit
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Yang, Ming
Sent: Friday, March 04, 2011 9:12 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Dynamic Agent Creation

 

Does MASON support dynamic agent creation? I mean to create agents not
all at the start up but some in the middle of simulation. The issue
seems at the method of "setupPortrayals()" in the GUIState object. I am
not sure if one needs to register all agents individually there to make
them show up at the simulation. If one does, we have a problem because
we do not know yet how many agents will show up eventually?

 

 

--------------------------------------------------------------

  Ming Yang, PhD

  Media & Mechatronic Systems Group

  Xerox Research Center Webster

 

  800 Phillips Rd (MS:0147-11B); Webster, NY, 14580

  Ph: (585) 422-2375     Fx: (585) 231-8404

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