Having been a Linux advocate for nearly 20 years I was converted to using a mac after working on Device Management project which was soley built around iOS and OS-X, so i used a mac on a daily basis. After that i was hooked and bought my first imac, an older 2nd model, but stilll good enough. When Mojave came out, I upgraded once more, again to a 2nd hand machine, but long and the short this machine was not capable of running Unity and Python scripts that ran quickly on Linux/Ubuntu were slow on it also.
As I needed to at least explore Unity and I also had Work (non academic) needs fo anew machine bought myself a decent spec imac, brand new !
I was then able to reinstall Unity and start building games/following tutorials.
I followed the toutorials to get started with Unity. I found it very enjoyable and amazing on what this software can achieve.
Processes: 583 total, 2 running, 581 sleeping, 3061 threads 21:08:52
Load Avg: 2.89, 3.97, 3.92 CPU usage: 2.13% user, 1.71% sys, 96.15% idle
SharedLibs: 605M resident, 101M data, 108M linkedit.
MemRegions: 287343 total, 17G resident, 369M private, 4886M shared.
PhysMem: 51G used (6305M wired), 77G unused.
VM: 4262G vsize, 2305M framework vsize, 0(0) swapins, 0(0) swapouts.
Networks: packets: 24934358/25G in, 64148466/53G out.
Disks: 1227896/57G read, 4118049/56G written.
PID COMMAND %CPU TIME #TH #WQ #PORTS MEM PURG CMPR PGRP
133 WindowServer 10.3 06:35:06 26 17 3779+ 959M- 4736K 0B 133
24728 Unity 9.0 02:01.42 117 4 1396 815M 3260K 0B 2472Even on a modern Mac Unity was taking its fair share of resources. I thought about the Netlogo app I had run because I couldnt get Unity to run. I was really impressed with that, even on an older mac, so I installed it on this newer model.
I found the code incredbly easy to read as well. It reminds me of a mixture of Pascal, Python and Basic.
| App | Pro | Con |
| Unity | It looks amaazing | The UI has to be learnt to get anywhere |
| NetLogo | Its very human-readable code | The graphics output (in 2d) are based on Python/Turtle |
| Unity | It has complex AI features | Learn how to use them within the UI and to build the app |
| NetLogo | Has complex AI Features | These have to be learned and is alot more theortical. |
| Unity | It can create publishable games to industry standard | “Pro” requires a subscription, not unlike Apples Development method to get apps into the App Store |
| NetLogo | It is light on resources allowing multiple applications to run | Its not as ‘pretty’as unity |
I think the most critical factor is that in the marking of the assignment we are not assesed on how the game looks, moreso on the AI. As I really want to get a excellent grade that is persusasive enough for me to go down the NetLogo route rather than Unity.
After reviewing the learning materials so far 2 books stood out, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, Global Edition (Russel/Norveg 2016) and Agent-Based Modeling (Wilensky, Rand 2015). The AI book is a weight tome ! but its already getting well dog-earred. I’m not pretending i can learn everything in it in one semester, its almost a whole academic year (if not more) worth of material in there.
I particuarly like the Agent Based Modelling book as its all around NetLogo and goes into very technical AI – exactly what the assignement is looking for. Its easy to read and makes me want to do all the exercises in it, but I will be practical and focus on what ones will deliver some form of ‘game’.
I got the Alien game and Headphones as I’ve not played alot of games on the PS4, and I want to make videos of myself palying it to see how emmersed i become in the game. I’ve heard its very good on the AI and can be even quite frightining ! Looking forward to makign those videos of me playing soon !