Developer Docs

Cloning the repository

Since we include documentation with many animated gifs and videos in the repository, a standard clone can be larger than expected. If you wish to do any development work, it is better to use

git clone https://github.com/JuliaDynamics/Agents.jl.git --single-branch

Creating a new space type

Creating a new space type within Agents.jl is quite simple and requires the extension of only 5 methods to support the entire Agents.jl API. The exact specifications on how to create a new space type are contained within the file: [src/core/space_interaction_API.jl].

In principle, the following should be done:

1. Think about what the agent position type should be.
2. Think about how the space type will keep track of the agent positions, so that it is possible to implement the function nearby_ids.
3. Implement the struct that represents your new space, while making it a subtype of AbstractSpace.
4. Extend random_position(model).
5. Think about how the positions of agents will be updated as agents are moved, added or killed.
6. Extend move_agent!(agent, pos, model), add_agent_to_space!(agent, model), remove_agent_from_space!(agent, model).
7. Extend nearby_ids(position, model, r).

And that's it!

Designing a new Pathfinder Cost Metric

To define a new cost metric, simply make a struct that subtypes CostMetric and provide a delta_cost function for it. These methods work solely for A* at present, but will be available for other pathfinder algorithms in the future.

Pathfinding.CostMetric{D}

delta_cost(pathfinder::AStar{D}, metric::M, from, to) where {M<:CostMetric}