CELL_Food Distribution System

Overall

This script discribes a system to distribute all food sources to all animal populations in a single level. It is meant to be attech to a script holder in each level.

How it works

This distrubution function UpdateFoodNeeds will be given an food source type and do that following:

• Realistic method

  1. Locate all food sources with the given type, foodSources.
  2. For each food source, foodSource, get all the animal that has access to it, animalPopulations.
  3. For all the animal populations, animalPopulations, remove the populations that does not consume foodSource, to get a new list animalsPopulationsThatCanConsumeFoodSource.
  4. Compute the competition rating (standard deviation) for each foodSource.
  5. Sort the food sources from foodSource based on the competition rating in increading order.
  6. Distribute each food source from foodSources starting with food source with low competition rating to high.

• Naive method Step 1,2,3 is the same as realistic method. Jump to step 6 and distribute in any order.

Detail

Formulas:

• Population dominance = species dominance • population size
• Group food = (population dominance / total dominance) • food source production
• Individual food = group food / population size

Pseudocode

class FoodDistributionSystem
{
    // Plot/reserve system 
    List<FoodSource> getFoodSourceByType()
    List<AnimalPopulation> getPopulationsCanAccess(FoodSource);

    // AnimalPopulation class
    List<AnimalPopulation> getPopulationsThatConsumeFoodSource(List<AnimalPopulation>, NeedType)
    float getPoplulationDomiance(AnimalPopulation);
    float getPopulationTotalDominace(AnimalPopulation);
    float getPopulationSize(AnimalPopulation);

    // NeedType
    float getFoodSourceOutput(FoodSource);

    void distributeFoodSource(FoodSource);
    float getCompetionRating(List<AnimalPopulation>);

    void updateFoodType(FoodSource.type)
    {
        List<FoodSource> foodSources = getFoodSourceByType();

        SortedList ratingAndPopulationPair = new SortedList();

        forEach(fs in foodSources)
        {
            List<AnimalPopulation> animalPopulations = getPopulationsCanAccess(fs);
            List<AnimalPopulation> populationsThatCanConsumeFoodSource(animalPopulations, fs);
            float competionRating = getCompetionRating(populationsThatCanConsumeFoodSource);

            ratingAndPopulationPair.Add(competionRating, fs);
        }

        foreach(DictionaryEntry pair in ratingAndPopulationPair)
        {
            distributeFoodSource(pair.Value);
        }
    }
}

Objective(s)

• break functionality into different functions, each function handles exactlly one thing
• try to reduce time complexity

Notes

• The systems behavior outsome should be easy for player to notice the effect of a change to the system.