SimBioSys

SimBioSys is a C++ class framework I designed as part of my masters thesis to facilitate the construction of evolutionary simulations. I've released the source code in a zip file (32k) under the terms of the Artistic License. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Abstract from SimBioSys: A Class Framework for Biological Simulations

The nascent field of artificial life promises to shed new light on issues in biology amenable to computer simulation. Researchers can benefit greatly from a toolkit designed to facilitate the development of evolutionary simulations by providing domain-specific, high-level components and a simulation architecture enforced through design affordances. This thesis describes the analysis, design, implementation, and evaluation of such a toolkit.

For the analysis, an ontological framework is developed by examining several representative simulation systems from the literature. Requirements for the toolkit are derived by abstracting common features from the surveyed systems. Based on these requirements, a prototype class library called SimBioSys is described.

The library provides a basic time-stepped simulation architecture consisting of a virtual environment inhabited by any number of evolving populations of autonomous agents. Each agent's behavior is driven by a program which takes the agent's local perceptions as input and computes an intention which the environment resolves into an action.

Initial testing of the toolkit on example applications shows that it is useful for developing evolutionary simulations. The examples include a simple version of Conway's Life, a re-implementation of Genesys/Tracker, and an original variation of the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma problem. Areas are suggested where the toolkit can be enhanced and extended.

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