Daisy World

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Instructions and Comments

About

DaisyWorld is a take on an older biodiversity program (also called DaisyWorld) that was used to illustrate the plausibility of Gaia Theory and the importance of Biodiversity.

Settings

This version of daisyworld has many variables that the user can set. Click the "Settings" button to access them.

Maximum Age When the daisy hits this age (number of frames since being 'born'), it dies and becomes dirt.
Normalization How fast does this color of daisy move toward the "ground temperature", set below.
Minimum Temp. If the daisy falls below this temperature, it dies.
Maximum Temp. If the daisy goes above this temperature, it dies.
Temp. Change The daisy affects itself (and daisy/dirt tiles within it's effect distance, see below) by this amount each frame.
Temp. Change
Effect Distance
How many tiles away from this daisy are effected by this daisy's temperature change? (Warning: Processor intensive at higher numbers.)
FrameRate The speed of the simulation, in frames (turns) per second. The simulation will only go as fast as the code for each daisy can run, however. (Warning: Processor intensive at higher numbers. Theoretical max: 60)
Num. of Dasies The number of dasies along each side. So, a number of 10 will have 100 dasies (10*10), and a number of 100 will have 10,000 dasies (100*100). (Warning: Processor intensive at higher numbers.)
Ground Temperature The temperature of the ground, also the starting temperature of each daisy. The "Normalization" amount (explained above) moves daisies toward this temperature.
Ground Rate The rate (per frame) that the ground heats/cools itself to move toward the "Ground Temperature" (Explained above.)

Algorithms

You can also set the algorithm that DaisyWorld uses to choose which color of daisy will be 'born' on open, temperature-appropriate ground.

Max Neighbor This algorithm cycles through all tiles that touch the target tile and computes which type of daisy is most prevalent. The new daisy is that color. There are two options, Speed and Accurate. Accurate chooses the most accurately (based on percentages), while speed is still quite accurate, but uses a faster algorithm.
Random Neighbor This algorithm checks which colors are touching the target tile, and then chooses randomly between those colors. Very fast while still being "fair" to all the colors.
Speed Neighbor Chooses a new color for the target tile based on the three letter code. Very fast. For example, using (WBG), the dirt tile first checks if there are any white dasies touching it. If there are, the tile grows a white daisy. Then it checks if there are any black dasies touching it. If there are, it grows a black daisy, then if touching grey, becomes grey. Fast, with cool visual and experimental results.
Pure Random Not very useful. Chooses a random color and grows it.