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Traffic-sim.png

Welcome to the AgentCubes Wiki. AgentCubes is the world's most accessible 3D authoring tool. AgentCubes introduces Incremental 3D, with the patented technology of Inflatable Icons, that allows you to go from 2D to 3D. Add that to the ease-of-use, ease-of-learning Visual Programming language (Visual AgenTalk), that lets you "drag and drop" to create your game and simulation behavior and you will be making 3D games and sharing them before you know it.


Arcade

  • Arcade: locate other people's projects, comment, rate them; share your own creations.


Videos

FAQ

  • FAQ: Get important information about AgentCubes.

Manuals

Programming

  • Conditions: VAT language pieces to test situations for your agents' behavior
  • Actions: VAT language pieces for your agents to act out
  • Methods: combine Rules into methods
  • Parameters: used in Conditions and Actions

Project Information

  • Project Designs: documentation for some of the AgentCubes projects that are bundled with the application

Books

End-User Programming

Repenning, A. and A. Ioannidou 2006. What makes End-User Development Tick? 13 design guidelines. in End-User Development. F. Patern&Mac247; and V. Wolf. Dordrecht, Kluwer.

Your Wish is My Command: Programming by Example Programming by example (PBE) and programming by demonstration (PBD) represent a departure from traditional programming methodology. Why should someone need to learn a complicated syntax to train a computer to perform an action? The idea is to instruct the computer to complete the action and let tools create the necessary syntax. This book discusses several different approaches in a range of industries where the technology is applicable and currently in use.

Simulation

Micro Motives and Macro Behavior, Thomas C. Schelling, 1978, A classic based on the 1971 paper "On the Ecology of Micromotives" explaining how small local phenomena and mind sets can lead to unexpected global consequences. Schelling explains some of these issues using board games.

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Malcolm Gladwell, 2000, "The best way to understand the dramatic transformation of unknown books into bestsellers, or the rise of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of word of mouth or any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life," writes Malcolm Gladwell, "is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do." This book is not really about simulations but simulations are ideal means to explore epidemics and to get a concrete sense of the Tipping Point. The [/_Applets/virus-attack-finished/index.html/ AgentSheets virus attack simulation] is an example of an epidemic.

Life on the Screen, Identify in the Age of the Internet, Sherry Turkle, 1995, This book is not concerned with technical aspects of simulation but about its social perspective. Turkle claims that we, as society of computer users, are advancing from a culture of calculation toward a culture of simulation. Simulation in her sense is about the way computers allow us to alter our identity. We found many parallels in our work with school kids creating animal world simulations. Very often these kids no longer distinguished between the artificial animals they had created and themselves.

Learning With Artificial Worlds : Computer Based Modeling in the Curriculum, Harvey Mellar, Joan Bliss, Richard Boohan, Jon Ogborn, 1994, A nice collection of papers about how modeling can be used in schools. A number of tools are discussed including spreadsheets, fluid-based modeling tools such as STELLA, and AgentSheets-like environment such as WorldMaker.

Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams : Explorations in Massively Parallel Microworlds, Mitchel Resnick, 1997, An exciting book about emerging phenomena and modeling in StarLogo. Through collaboration StarLogo and AgentSheets co-evolved for quite some time. Many things that can be done in AgentSheets could also be done in StarLogo and the other way around.

Growing Artificial Societies : Social Science from the Bottom Up, Joshua M. Epstein, 2050 Project, Robert L. Axtell , 1996, An ambitious book showing how complex issues such as sex, culture, and combat can emerge from simple formalism. Braden Craig created a language extension kit to AgentSheets and built many of the simulations in the book. Braden thesis work called AGES (Agentsheets Genetic Evolutionary System) can be freely accessed .

The Evolution of Cooperation, Robert Axelrod, 1985, From the Publisher "The much-discussed book that explores how cooperation can emerge in a world of self-seeking egoists--whether superpowers, businesses, or individuals--when there is no central authority to police their actions." Axelrod is a leader in applying computer modeling to social science problems.

The Complexity of Cooperation Agent-Based Models of Competition and Collaboration (Princeton Studies in Complexity), Robert Axelrod, 1997, Collection of essays serving as sequel to "The Evolution of Cooperation"

Programming

Java in a Nutshell, David Flanagan , 1997. Our current pick of a Java introduction book. Very compact. Ideal for people with C++ or Lisp background. More neutral than the Sun books.

Common Lisp: The Language, Guy L., Jr. Steele, 1990. If you program in Lisp you need this book.

License

Acknowledgements

  • AgentCubes has been funded by the National Science Foundation under Grant Numbers IIP 0712571 and IIP-0848962. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
  • AgentSheets Inc. wishes to thank
    • Christopher Lloyd: Cocotron creator, an open source Objective-C API similar to Apple's Cocoa. He has been invaluable in getting AgentCubes to run on Windows, by extending his Cocotron implementation to meet our needs.
    • All the dedicated testers and project/inflatable icon contributors:
      • Fred Gluck: instructor at Science Discovery
      • Tim Henderson: past intern at AgentSheets Inc. and now student at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs
      • Tucker Matous: middle school student at Centennial Middle School
      • Derek Palmer: intern at AgentSheets Inc.
    • The University of Colorado evaluation team that assessed the pilot uses of AgentCubes in classes:
      • Dr. David Webb, Assistant Professor at the School of Education
      • Krista Marshall and Sarah Roberts, graduate students at the School of Education
    • Pioneer teachers that piloted AgentCubes in their classes
      • Burke Taft, teacher at Centennial Middle School, Boulder, CO (now retired)
      • Jason Reub, teacher at East Junior High School, Rock Springs, WY
    • Project Contributors:
      • Jacopo Malnati: co-creator of Traffic Sim project
      • Marco Primi: co-creator of Traffic Sim project
    • Inflatable Icon Contributors:
      • Patrick Enrique Vargas: student at the University of Colorado at Boulder
      • Hunter Stevenson: student at the University of Colorado at Boulder
      • Margaret Katherine McNulty: student at the University of Colorado at Boulder
    • Texture Contributors: