Ecological Artificial Life - contents

Chapter 5. Testing

The source code (see Appendix) contains some lines like this:

#If DEBUG Then
' Tell the user how long this took.
MessageBox.Show("Total elapsed simulation time: " & _
CDome.SimElapsedTime.ToString() & _
" milliseconds.", "Elapsed time", _
MessageBoxButtons.OK, _
MessageBoxIcon.Information)
#End If

These are used for diagnostic purposes, and will not appear when an end-user runs the simulation. The main purpose of these conditional statements is to ensure that the calibration of the tick rate has worked correctly, i.e. that the simulation isn't trying to fit more ticks than it can handle into a second.

Increasing the time-warp factor is a useful way of inspecting long-term changes in a short space of time. Another approach is to modify the constants temporarily, e.g. so that eggs hatch after 5 seconds.


Next: 6. Conclusion and Future Work


This page was last updated on 2004-09-05 by John C. Kirk

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