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.
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?
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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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