Upgrades and games !

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 !

2020 imac, it smelt as good as it looked out the box

I was then able to reinstall Unity and start building games/following tutorials.

Unity Looks gorgeous !

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   2472

Even 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.

Pacman in NetLogo impressed me ! (credits to Uri Wilensky)

I found the code incredbly easy to read as well. It reminds me of a mixture of Pascal, Python and Basic.

AppProCon
UnityIt looks amaazingThe UI has to be learnt to get anywhere
NetLogoIts very human-readable codeThe graphics output (in 2d) are based on Python/Turtle
UnityIt has complex AI featuresLearn how to use them within the UI and to build the app
NetLogoHas complex AI FeaturesThese have to be learned and is alot more theortical.
UnityIt can create publishable games to industry standard“Pro” requires a subscription, not unlike Apples Development method to get apps into the App Store
NetLogoIt is light on resources allowing multiple applications to runIts not as ‘pretty’as unity
considering the pros and cons of Unity and NetLogo

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.

New books and a game !

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 !