Simulation-building is something I seem to return to over and over again. I really enjoy learning something new each time I witness how small behaviors produce emergent behavior. Graphics are an accessible way to conceptualize the complex nature of multi-variable simulations. In this article, I lay the foundation for a project I hope will serve as the first chapter for a much larger vision.

Let’s explore Kivy, a powerful Python app development library.

Spoiler alert, this has, by far, been my best experience with a Graphical User Interface (GUI) library in Python. For me, it provides the best of two worlds for building a small application for a very basic simulation:

• Layout management and simple widgets for boiler-plate application objects, like buttons and text inputs.
• Custom drawing to the widgets’ underlying canvas, allowing for custom shapes and graphics.

A Very Basic Simulation

To get a better feel for this GUI framework, I decided to implement a primitive simulation to display on my application. The rules are simple: You have people and you have food! A person (red square) has a stomach and energy. The person’s stomach is filled with food, and energy is created from the food in their stomach. Food (green square) is a stationary source for a person to fill their stomach.

People move around in search for stationary food supplies, which expends energy and in turn uses the food in their stomach. If a person’s energy and stomach level reach 0, they are no longer considered alive (blue square).

Kivy

All right, with the simulation explained, it’s time to dig into Kivy! Kivy gives you so much to play with, yet has a refreshingly minimal barrier to entry. You can add buttons, text boxes, labels, and so much more! The best part is, through the Kv Language, your GUI can function on its own without Python code driving it. There is a helpful rundown on the Kv language on Kivy’s website here.

Kv Design Language

An example of this can be found in my ‘SimulationController’ widget, defined in SimulationGUI.kv below:

<SimulationController>
    BoxLayout:
        width: root.width
        height: root.height
        orientation: "horizontal"
        BoxLayout:
            orientation: "vertical"

            Slider:
                id: grid_height
                min: 25
                max: int(root.height)
                step: 1
                orientation: "horizontal"
            Label:
                text: str(grid_height.value) + " Map Height"
            
            Slider:
                id: grid_width
                min: 25
                max: int(root.width)
                step: 1
                orientation: "horizontal"
            Label:
                text: str(grid_width.value) + " Map Width"

You can see the ‘SimulationController,’ with two nested ‘BoxLayouts.’

<SimulationController>
    BoxLayout:
        width: root.width
        height: root.height
        orientation: "horizontal"
        BoxLayout:
            orientation: "vertical"

On the outermost ‘BoxLayout,’ I define its width and height to fill the space allotted to it by the element into which it is inserted. It took me a while to wrap my head around this as I attempted bigger layouts. Also note the orientation, which describes the direction things will be stacked.

Inside the innermost ‘BoxLayout,’ you can see Slider and Label pairs:

            Slider:
                id: grid_height
                min: 25
                max: int(root.height)
                step: 1
                orientation: "horizontal"
            Label:
                text: str(grid_height.value) + " Map Height"
            
            Slider:
                id: grid_width
                min: 25
                max: int(root.width)
                step: 1
                orientation: "horizontal"
            Label:
                text: str(grid_width.value) + " Map Width"

The Slider and Label are GUI Widgets built into the Kivy library. For the Slider, I set an ID value (basically a name referenced elsewhere in the code), along with a minimum and maximum value. In the Label Widget, you can see the GUI driving itself a bit – the text of the Label is set by the value currently selected by the Slider. This might be a commonplace functionality for a GUI framework that I just haven’t discovered before, but I really like it. Everything looks a lot cleaner when simple functionalities like this are independent from the Python code.

Invoking Python code directly from this language is pretty easy, too.

        Button:
            id: start_but
            on_press: app.run_sim(root.ids.num_people.value, root.ids.num_food.value, root.ids.grid_height.value, root.ids.grid_width.value)
            text: "Start Simulation"

In the above example, you can see a direct reference to ‘app’ and a call to ‘run_sim.’ This is defined on the Python side in my ‘SimulationGUIApp’ object which inherits from the ‘App’ object from the Kivy library.

The reference to ‘run_sim’ uses information from our widget and calls the function with the values collected as parameters. Awesome!

Kivy and Python

For me, it is often difficult to understand the interface between a design language and a program language (I’m looking at you, Javascript and CSS!). Let’s cover some basics.

Make Kv Definitions Python reference-able

First thing: How do you let Kivy know you are using a Kv file? There are a few ways to do this, but the one I chose was to name the .Kv file the same thing as my app’s object name (e.g., Kv filename is ‘SimulationGUI.kv’ and my Python object is ‘SimulationGUIApp’). An important detail here is to note that my Python object name ends with ‘App,’ while the filename doesn’t.

As for the Widgets defined in the .Kv file, all we have to do to use them on the Python side is create an empty class with the same name, as shown below:

.Kv Definition

<SimulationController>
    BoxLayout:
        width: root.width
        height: root.height
        orientation: "horizontal"

Python Definition

class SimulationController(Widget):
    pass

Even though the class is empty, the layout and widgets are defined in the .Kv file and will be shown when the app loads.

Once you do that, you can add Widgets to an App, creating your interface. In the example below, class ‘MainScreen’ inherits from ‘BoxLayout’ and then adds two Widgets to itself. One of the widgets is our familiar ‘SimulationController.’ Next, a ‘MainScreen’ object is instantiated and added to the app class (‘SimulationGUIApp’) in its build method.

class SimulationViewport(Widget):
    pass

class SimulationController(Widget):
    pass
        
class MainScreen(BoxLayout):
    def __init__(self, **kwargs):
        super(MainScreen, self).__init__(**kwargs)
        self.orientation = "vertical"
        self.size_hint = (1.,1.)

        self.sim_view = SimulationViewport()
        self.sim_cont = SimulationController()

        print(self.sim_cont.ids["grid_height"].value)
        
        self.add_widget(self.sim_view)
        self.add_widget(self.sim_cont)

class SimulationGUIApp(App):
    def build(self):
        main_screen = MainScreen()

        self.sim_view = main_screen.sim_view

        return main_screen

I decided to do it this way so I could access the canvas of our ‘SimulationViewport’ for drawing people and food. Also, in the above snippet, I left in a line of code to show how you can reference the values of the Widgets contained in our Kv-defined widgets using the ‘ids’ dictionary.

A Slightly More Advanced Kivy Concept

Until now, we have focused on the basic uses of Kivy. Now, let’s dive into how to draw on Widgets so that we can see our people as they wander around our world looking for food sources.

Assumptions Kill Me

One frustrating mistake I made was when I assumed that my drawing would be relative to the corner of my Widget. In a multi-widget layout, this would mean that the position of each drawing would be local to its own widget. In reality, the drawings are positioned within the global window’s coordinate grid, regardless of widget. With this mistaken assumption, I thought that the Widgets were overlapping one another. I likely developed this intuition from HTML and CSS, where the flow layout can cause elements to exist over one another.

Finally, I realized that drawing occurs from the window’s origin. This is really simple to do, but figuring it out was difficult. Below is the code snippet that saved me, particularly the self.sim_view.pos[0] and [1].

pos_screen_x = x * block_width + self.sim_view.pos[0]
pos_screen_y = y * block_height + self.sim_view.pos[1]

Rectangle(pos=(pos_screen_x, pos_screen_y), size=(block_width, block_height))

A ‘Rectangle’ is drawn at the x, y coordinates of our Person or Food with an offset of ‘self.sim_view.pos[0]’ and ‘[1],’ which gets it to our desired spot. The challenging part, however, is that you can draw outside the widget and it will still be rendered if it is within the window’s region.

So now we are drawing in the right place, but how do we select a color?

It’s like painting

Right above the lines of code where we select the x and y coordinates, there is an if-else block where the color palette is chosen for the upcoming ‘Rectangle’ draw. This color choice selects a value between 0 and 1 for each color (Red/Green/Blue). Here, we check if our object is ‘Food’ or ‘Person.’ Then, we select red or green of varying intensity, based on energy or food levels:

if isinstance(thing, Food):
    color_strength = thing.Amount / thing.MaxAmount
    color_strength = max([color_floor, color_strength])

    Color(0.,color_strength,0.)
elif isinstance(thing, Person):
    color_strength = thing.Energy / thing.EnergyMax
    color_strength = max(color_floor, color_strength)
    if thing.alive:
        Color(color_strength,0.,0.)
    else:
        Color(0.,0.,1.)

Conclusion

This has been a wonderful learning experience for me, and I hope by posting it here it can be useful to you, too! I look forward to possibly building out the simulation and controls with more options and depth.

If you are interested in further reading on my work in the simulation building realm, check out my wandering development post here, where I attempt to build a balanced simulation of a simple model for populations and reproduction.

There is also an excellent website with many models much better than mine on a website called NetLogo. I found this gem while doing research for my simulation (I also bought a book, Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life, to add to my collection of unread books!).

Thank you so much for sticking with me, I hope the coming week receives you well 🙂

Code

Get the code for my simulation at my GitHub.

Last week, my son Isaac was crushed by his 3rd-grade spelling test. For an 8-year-old, it can be difficult to study something that might seem opaque in its usefulness. So, with a bit of Python magic, let us engage the children in solving a spelling maze!

The idea is to accept the input of a word, then generate a maze where the path to success is made easier if you know the next letter of the word.

Just Passing Through (TL;DR)

I figured I would need the ability to 1) generate a maze, 2) find all the junction points of that maze, and 3) draw letters at the junctions which lead the player down the correct route.

I built infrastructure and foundational code to perform functions like determining block positions, drawing the maze, and cleaning up relationships between blocks. Separately, I created a Maze class, which handled the maze-generation algorithm. I treated this Maze class as a parent to the WordMaze class which handles many of the functions related to letter placement. This helped de-clutter the Maze class and extend its functionality.

At the end of my project journey, I developed the code to apply words in the maze. This part became pretty complex, as I needed many parameters to be met so that the letters would group properly and the possible “incorrect” letter junctions along the solution route would be challenging enough. There were bugs to iron out, but eventually the code worked. Even better, soon a kid will be learning his spelling list and having fun at the same time!

Staying for a While (Technical Peeps)

The code for this project can be found at my GitHub.

Infrastructure and Foundational Code

After writing a toy maze generator, it was clear that I would need to build some foundations to help reduce the top-level complexity of the maze generation code. The three main foundational classes were:

• A Map Class
• A Draw Class
• A Path Class

Foundational Code: Map Class

The map class handles the grid of blocks to represent a player’s position at any point in the maze. It performs the following functions:

• Block relationships, including entry and exit directions
• Block positions, including x-y coordinate grid

Foundational Code: Draw Class

The draw class (‘Drawable2D’ in the code) is responsible for drawing to a grid of pixels, as defined by the object itself. This is an inheritable class allowing an object to set its pixel width and height and call functions like ‘fill,’ ‘draw_portion,’ or ‘draw_edge.’

The object inheriting from this class must implement a ‘draw’ method instructing how to draw itself.

Foundational Code: Path Class

This class is responsible primarily for generating random paths using the ‘step_path’ function. By moving this logic to its own class, we radically reduce the complexity of generating the maze.

Now that we have a high level view of the classes involved, let’s get into the actual maze generation!

Maze Generation

The code is available at my GitHub, but I will include the chunks of code I am referencing as we go along. For this section we will look at the ‘generate_maze’ function in the Maze class, as shown below:

def generate_maze(self):
    # Setup our start and end blocks
    self.map_start = self.map.get_start_block()
    self.map_end = None

    # We always go from North to South
    self.map_start.entry_direction = GridDirection.North

    # Setup our temporary algorithm variable
    new_start = self.map_start 

    # Start our Algorithm
    while not self.map_end:
        # Generate random paths from our starting block
        self.generate_paths(new_start)
        
        # Get the lowest block and set an exit direction (South)
        y, lowest_block = self.get_lowest_block()
        lowest_block.exit_directions.add(GridDirection.South)

        # If we have hit the bottom of the play area make this our end block
        if y == self.map.grid_height - 1:
            self.map_end = lowest_block
        # If we haven't hit the bottom then make this our next start block for random paths
        else:
            new_start = self.map.get_block_in_direction(lowest_block, GridDirection.South)
            new_start.entry_direction = GridDirection.North

    # Draw the final maze
    self.map.draw()

Firstly, we only make Mazes that start at the top and end at the bottom. With this basic tenet, we can say that we aren’t done building the maze until we have at least one block touching the southern edge of the grid. This is why our main while loop is checking for a ‘map_end’ block. We will be iterating the algorithm steps until we see such a block.

So first we grab the map’s start block, set that as our ‘new_start’ and generate paths from it. Once we have generated the paths for ‘new_start,’ we get the lowest block explored on the grid. If this block is touching the southern edge of the grid, we are done! If it isn’t touching the southern edge, then we set the southern edge as an exit. Next, we get the block south of this block and set it as ‘new_start’ and let the algorithm run again.

Generate Paths

The ‘generate_paths’ function (code below) is a random depth-first search algorithm that will generate random exits as it goes on its current search.

def generate_paths(self, start_block: Block):
    # Setup our Algorithm temporary variables
    possible_path_starts = [start_block]

    # While we have possible path starts continue building
    while possible_path_starts:
        # Randomly choose our next path start and remove it from the list
        current_start = random.choice(possible_path_starts)
        possible_path_starts.remove(current_start)

        # If this block is already explored move on
        if current_start.explored:
            continue
        
        # Otherwise create a new path and step it until it is finished
        path = Path(self.map, current_start)
        while not path.complete:
            possible_path_starts.extend(path.step_path())

Below is a GIF of how this algorithm looks when it is running.

It will eventually produce a maze like this:

All right, so we have a maze generated! Now how do we get our word in there to guide our kid to the spelling solution?

Putting Spelling Words in the Maze

With perfect 20/20 hindsight, I probably would have included exit count in path creation when I was working on the maze generator. I hadn’t considered how to control the number of exits on the solution path until I tried applying a word to it. The problem is our solution path must have exactly the same number of junctions as there are letters in our target word. This means if we have too many junctions on our solution path, we must do something to remove them.

I had a few ideas on how to do this with simple algorithms that I thought for sure would do exactly what I wanted them to do… None of them worked for various reasons, largely due to bugs in the foundational code.

I created multiple band-aids to mitigate these problems. If the band-aids stacked too high, I would eventually sift the code down to where it belonged. However, I will warn the reader, none of the code that I submit here is pretty. This was one of those “quickly written/get the thing working!” kind of projects. Should it be deemed for long term use, I think a rewrite would be warranted and easily done. Anyway, on to the method that I chose!

Apply Word

The ‘apply_word’ method orchestrates all the steps in adding letters to our maze and is included in a child class of the Maze class called… WordMaze.

def apply_word(self):
    exit_count = len(self.word)
    solution_junctions = self.get_solution_path_junctions()
    
    if len(solution_junctions) < exit_count - 1:
        raise IndexError("Not enough exit points to write word!")
    
    # Randomly select the junctions to be used for our word path
    selected_junctions = self.select_solution_path_junctions(solution_junctions)

    # Close off and unexplore all other junctions
    self.close_all_solution_path_junctions(solution_junctions, selected_junctions)

    # Reopen paths for unexplored areas on valid routes
    self.fill_out_unexplored_areas()
    
    # Apply letters to junctions
    self.apply_letters_to_junctions()

Put simply, after we have generated a maze using our parent class, we find all junctions in the map and select ones that are located along the solution path. From this smaller set, we randomly choose the junctions we want to use for the letters of our word (this shortens the list further).

With our solution letter junctions selected, we need to get rid of all other junctions along the solution path. So, we close off their entry and “un-explore” them, meaning we reset them to the original state they held before we applied any path algorithm to them.

At this point we have a pretty boring maze, and it likely is pretty easy to distinguish which path is the right one because we “un-explored” all but the ones chosen for our letters. To increase complexity, we open the dead-ends of our selected paths, exploring them until the dead space is accessible again from the selected junction.

If this is still confusing, stick with me, we have some visual elements below that will hopefully fill any gaps of understanding. First, let’s break down the important methods included in the code block above that follow the steps I just described.

get solution path junctions

This function gets all of the junctions in the map and randomly selects ones that exist on the solution path.

select solution path junctions

Of the set of junctions that exist on the solution path, select only as many as there are letters in our target word. Do this selection at random.

close all solution path junctions

This closes all of our non-selected solution path junctions and marks the blocks in the path closed off from the solution path as not explored.

Fill out unexplored areas

Now that we have a bunch of unexplored territory, let’s re-explore it from the dead ends of the selected paths. This should make the puzzle a bit more…puzzling!

Apply Letters to junctions

Finally, let’s get some letters at the junction exits. This method will iterate all junctions, giving them each a random letter. Then, it will iterate all the solution path blocks in order, applying the correct letter of the word to each. To make things a bit more tricky in the orthogonal direction of the solution path, we put the letter that comes after the correct letter.

Below is a GIF showing the re-exploration of unexplored map area:

With re-exploration completed, we can perform letter application. Below is the result of running the following command:

python3 ./main.py --word Discover

Conclusion

Spelling is difficult for many youngsters my son’s age. I hope that doing puzzles will push it just far enough over the edge of engagement to keep him moving forward. I want to thank you for sticking with me through this post. I hope the ideas and implementation I shared were thought-provoking. If you have any thoughts inspired by this post, please feel free to leave a comment below.

Also, if there is interest, I can push a web version of this application so that you can generate spelling mazes from a webpage instead of having to run it on your local machine.

Thanks for reading!

Spelling Maze Code

The code for this project can be found at my GitHub.

My Related Work

If you find algorithms interesting and would like to read more about another project of mine, check out another interesting algorithm problem from my PaperBoy VR Game.

This week has been another very productive one! Let’s dig in and check out the progress!

Building

As you might recall, I left off last week with the inlays drilled to lay the stepper motors in. On Monday I jumped straight in where I left off by sanding down these inlays. My goal here was to help promote a better fit as well as easier adjustment. Below is a photo of these inlays.

After cleaning up the inlays, I was able to add some legs to the back of the clock face, acting as a support to keep it upright. I was also able to add adjustable rubber feet onto these to ensure the clock’s stability.

After I had this done, I attached a spacer to the front clock face (displaying hours). Lifting it from the rest of clock, this allows for the 2nd clock face (displaying minutes) to be accessible from the stepper motors. Pic below

After I was able to get the main pieces of the clock’s frame assembled I moved on to the remaining parts. I fitted the stepper motors in their inlays, and attached the pulleys to the motors. I then attached some rope to the gears I’m using to display the time. This brought it all together and allowed a peak into the final product.

After I got everything assembled, I quickly tore it back apart. I had stained the wood already but now it was time to add a top coat. I went with a semi-satin finish to bring the grain out without making it too glossy. Unfortunately, there’s a 24 hour drying period between coats so from Friday forward I had to put a hold on things while applying coats and waiting for them to dry.

I’m happy to say I hit my goal for the week, and even added onto it with the top coat I didn’t originally factor in (use protection kids!). This upcoming week, I’m hoping to fit all the electronics to the model, and get a start on translating that code from my first render into C+. Thanks for reading, stay posted 🙂

I don’t know what I am doing, I have never made a balanced simulation in my life. This is purely an exploration of the idea.

Travis

All right, lets get down to it, I am genuinely curious how many variables I can add to a simulation… Coded myself… Using Python, Sqlite, Matplotlib, and have it continue for a lengthy period of time… How much? you might ask. The answer is, of course, AS MUCH AS WE CAN GET! ONWARD!

To start with, I think I will use the tutorial here to get my feet wet on animated graphs with Matplotlib, because who wants to watch the statistics of your simulation in snapshots? (Not this guy)

We also need to think about data storage, I think (getting the objects that will be my actors/variables to behave in a semi ‘normal’ way). In the short term, we can stick with just local variables like lists and dictionaries. However, reaching any further than even just a couple of variables we, I think, should implement a Sqlite back end to store the information. This will make retrieval and multi-threaded things easier I think.

Let’s also define when the simulation is ‘broken’ and should be ‘stopped’… Let’s say:

1. When any one variable climbs way beyond any other.
2. When all variables are ‘dead.’
3. When a ‘steady state’ is achieved.
   • Meaning we lose interest in the animated graph because it no longer seems interesting… Though a steady state is kind of fun to think about.
     • Like, how? You know? How is everything 1 to 1 like that? Idk…

Time to code!

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
"""
Created on Tue Jan 11 18:13:50 2022

@author: Travis Adsitt
"""

from dataclasses import dataclass
from enum import Enum
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import random


GESTATION_TIME = 9
LIFE_TIME = 876

class Gender(Enum):
    Male = "Male"
    Female = "Female"

@dataclass(init=True)
class WorldTraits:
    population: list
    time: int
    
    
class World:
    def __init__(self, population):
        assert isinstance(population, int), "population must be of type 'int'"
        
        self.traits = WorldTraits(
            population=[],
            time=0
            )
        
        self.traits.population = [Person(self, 0.0) for p in range(0, population)]
    
    def birth(self):
        """
        Helper function for the Person object to inform the World that they have
        had a child.

        Returns
        -------
        None.

        """
        # Create a new person
        new_peep = Person(self, 0.0)
        
        # Add them to the population
        self.traits.population.append(new_peep)
    
    def attempt_mate(self, person_one, person_two):
        """
        Helper function to handle the resolution as to whether to individuals
        can mate, and attempt to impregnate them if they can

        Parameters
        ----------
        person_one : Person
            Any individual person
        person_two : Person
            Any other individual person

        Returns
        -------
        None.

        """
        # Check if they are female
        one_kids = person_one.traits.gender == Gender.Female
        two_kids = person_two.traits.gender == Gender.Female
        
        # Check if one female and one male
        if one_kids and not two_kids or not one_kids and two_kids:
            # Attempt impregnation on the correct individual
            if one_kids:
                person_one.attempt_to_impregnate(self.traits.time)
            else:
                person_two.attempt_to_impregnate(self.traits.time)
            
    
    def reproduction_cycle(self):
        """
        Helper function to handle the reproduction behavior of the population.

        Returns
        -------
        None.

        """
        # Shuffle everyone so we can pick peeps at 'random'
        random.shuffle(self.traits.population)
        
        # Make a copy of the population to ensure we don't change under the 
        # iterator
        pop_copy = self.traits.population.copy()
        people_iterator = iter(pop_copy)
        
        # attempt mating in twos
        for person in people_iterator:
            try:
                self.attempt_mate(person, next(people_iterator))
            except StopIteration:
                break
        
            
    
    def tick_time(self):
        """
        Helper function to push the world forward one month at a time.

        Returns
        -------
        None.

        """
        # Tick time on all people
        for person in self.traits.population:
            person.tick_time(self.traits.time)
        
        # Try and mate
        self.reproduction_cycle()
        # Tick our time forward
        self.traits.time += 1
    

@dataclass(init=True)
class PersonTraits:
    alive: bool
    ispregnant: bool
    pregnancystart: int
    age: int
    gender: Gender
    money: float

class Person:
    def __init__(self, world, money):
        assert isinstance(world, World), "world, must be of type 'World'"
        assert isinstance(money, float), "money must be of type 'float'"
        
        # Set our world object
        self.world = world
        # Set our initial 'last_time'
        self.last_time = self.world.traits.time
        # Set our initial traits
        self.traits = PersonTraits(
            alive=True,
            ispregnant=False, 
            pregnancystart=None, 
            age=0, 
            gender=Gender[random.choice([g.name for g in Gender])],
            money=money
        )
    
    def spend_money(self, amount):
        """
        Used to check if this person can spend money, and if so, does spend
        the amount passed in.

        Parameters
        ----------
        amount : float
            How much money should I spend?

        Returns
        -------
        bool
            If I spent the money

        """
        spent = False
        
        if(self.money >= amount):
            self.money -= amount
            spent = True
        
        return spent
    
    def advance_automatic_tickers(self, time):
        """
        Helper function to advance the automatic tickers for a person, such as
        age or checking for a pregnancy... Those sorts of things.

        Parameters
        ----------
        time : int
            The current time in the world.

        Returns
        -------
        None.

        """
        # We get older
        self.traits.age += time - self.last_time
        
        # We sometimes die
        if(self.traits.age > 876):
            self.traits.alive = False
        
        # Sometimes people give birth
        if self.traits.ispregnant and ((time - self.traits.pregnancystart) > GESTATION_TIME):
            self.world.birth()
            self.traits.ispregnant = False
            self.traits.pregnancystart = None
    
    def wants_childeren(self):
        """
        For the world to call when determining if a pregnancy should happen.

        Returns
        -------
        bool
            If I want childeren

        """
        # ~16 to ~35 years old
        wants_childeren = self.traits.age > 192 and self.traits.age < 420
        # Can't have childeren if we already have them
        wants_childeren = not self.traits.ispregnant and wants_childeren
        
        return wants_childeren
    
    def attempt_to_impregnate(self, time):
        """
        Impregnate this person(female)

        Returns
        -------
        None.

        """
        if self.traits.gender == Gender.Female and self.wants_childeren() and self.traits.alive:
            self.traits.ispregnant = True
            self.traits.pregnancystart = time
    
    def tick_time(self, time):
        """
        A 'behavior' function to encapsulate a decision point for this person.

        Parameters
        ----------
        time : int
            The current time tick of the world.

        Returns
        -------
        None.

        """
        self.advance_automatic_tickers(time)
        self.last_time = time
        
def get_plot_vars(world):
    men = 0
    women = 0
    alive = 0
    dead = 0
    for person in world.traits.population:
        if person.traits.alive:
            alive += 1
            
            if person.traits.gender == Gender.Female:
                women += 1
            else:
                men += 1
                
        else:
            dead += 1
    
    return (women, men, alive, dead)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    new_world = World(1000)
    
    women_list = []
    men_list = []
    alive_list = []
    dead_list = []
    
    time_list = []
    
    for time in range(0,100000):
        new_world.tick_time()
        women, men, alive, dead = get_plot_vars(new_world)
        
        women_list.append(women)
        men_list.append(men)
        alive_list.append(alive)
        dead_list.append(dead)
        
        time_list.append(time)
        
        plt.plot(time_list, women_list, label="Women")
        plt.plot(time_list, men_list, label="Men")
        plt.plot(time_list, alive_list, label="Alive")
        plt.plot(time_list, dead_list, label="Dead")
        plt.draw()
        plt.pause(0.05)
    
    plt.show()
    
    

Ok, so this code represents the base system for a world and people to ‘exist.’ In this world people can reproduce and die. After a few minutes of thinking, maybe even less, you’ll likely ask me — but Travis, won’t this just be an exponential increase in population? Didn’t we agree that that was a ‘broken’ simulation?

Yes. This is just the base, and unfortunately in order to balance this out, we will need to introduce something that kills people… That we will have to find out tomorrow, because I need sleep now. To keep you company while I am away, here is an animated image of our exponential growth!

Label your graph, Travis! the teacher screams. Yeah, yeah, I will next time. The x-axis represents time in months, the blue/orange lines are one of the two genders, the green line is the total alive, and the red line is dead (which might be broken).

END DAY 1

Thoughts

Ok, I have been gone a day and had a chance to think about this a bit, so to start I am simply going to clean up any magic numbers I have lingering and place them at the top as constants.

Along with this I am adding a ‘DIVIDER’ variable to cut down things to a reasonable scale for short-term experiments. The new variables can be seen below:

DIVIDER = 50

REPRODUCTIVE_AGE_START = int(192 / DIVIDER)
REPRODUCTIVE_AGE_END = int(420 / DIVIDER)
GESTATION_TIME_MONTHS = int(9 / DIVIDER)
LIFE_TIME_MONTHS = int(876 / DIVIDER)

With these variables installed throughout the code, it becomes much easier to adjust things and see how they change the graph. For instance, using the settings above we get the following graph:

Which is quite exciting, considering we are trying to “balance” our simulation. I am thinking it would be a good idea to change the way we count deaths, that is, instead of counting total deaths, we count deaths in the last cycle. To do this, we simply need to keep a running value of total deaths and subtract it each time from the previous month.

So it seems that starting conditions are a huge factor in this. The first one we ran (above) ended in 3000 months. Below is an example of one that ran until I had to shut it down because I didn’t put a stop condition in and I needed to go to bed.

In the next couple days I want to port this to SQLite so we can have some memory savings and maybe data access speedup (doubt it though). I find it overwhelmingly fascinating that even at these seemingly small variable counts, we can have such large differences between runs. I look forward to the data this will generate 🙂 Goodnight!

END DAY 2

Another day later, I realize I didn’t talk much about one of the things we noticed about yesterday’s graph: There is almost always a spike in population when the blue line (I think this is the women population) crosses to be above the orange line (the men population). This is interesting for a number of reasons, and our speculation is that when there are more women in the world, clearly there is a higher probability to have children. Also, when those women get too old to have children, if they didn’t have girls when they were having children, then we are likely to see a downturn in population as there aren’t enough women to bear children.

These findings are hardly revolutionary, but it is still cool to uncover, and feel like we are discovering something. Probably shouldn’t make it a habit though 🙂

Anyway, today I want to improve the efficiency of my simulation, and maybe even get started with the move to a Model View Controller(MVC) architecture.

To start, let’s take some timings. For this, I am thinking of 4 places:

• Render
• Stats Collection
• World Resolver
• Person Resolver

In order to do it, I will install time-collection points at the beginning and end of each of these, subtracting the last from the first. I’ll let it run for a while, storing all these measurements and averaging them at the end.

• 

• 

On the left you can see different timing measurements (in seconds) over the current world time. On the right is the graph that represents the world run. From the timing measurements, we can see our World Resolver is going to quickly become unmanageable — I would imagine the memory usage is horrendous on this as well.

For the World Resolver, I think we can make it a shallower linear increase by simply removing the dead Persons and placing them in their own list each time we resolve. This will reduce the number of Persons we need to resolve way down the line (dead people don’t change much). We could also have a win by multi-threading this to parallelize the Person resolutions. This is almost trivial to do, but we have the pesky births that might cause race conditions — so let’s mutex the population list somehow and we should be clear to multi-thread.

Let’s see how those two changes affect our timings:

• 

• 

Those changes were right on point, you can clearly see we have cut down any latency that we might have had to almost nothing! Now we can run some truly long simulations without as much worry over memory and execution time. Speculating on this, I think that even the transfer of dead to their own list has memory implications, namely, we no longer need to keep them in cache or nearby because of their less frequent use. Let’s take off the gloves and run 500 months without any scaling, that is, no division of 50…

• 

• 

Oooo, look at that! We are starting to see the signs of stress as our population comes to 20,000. Wonder how far we can take this, let’s run for 1.5x a lifetime 🙂

• 

• 

All right, that caps the day 🙂 See you tomorrow on POST DAY!

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
"""
Created on Tue Jan 11 18:13:50 2022

@author: Travis Adsitt
"""

from dataclasses import dataclass
from enum import Enum
from threading import Thread, Lock
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import random
import time as real_time

# Timing variables for benchmarking different portions of code
timing_vars = {
    "Render": [],
    "StatCollection": [],
    "PersonResolver": [],
    "WorldResolver": [],
    "Population": []
    }

DIVIDER = 1
THREADS = 16

START_POP = 1000
RUN_IN_MONTHS = 1000


REPRODUCTIVE_AGE_START = int(192 / DIVIDER)
REPRODUCTIVE_AGE_END = int(420 / DIVIDER)
GESTATION_TIME_MONTHS = int(9 / DIVIDER)
LIFE_TIME_MONTHS = int(876 / DIVIDER)

class Gender(Enum):
    Male = "Male"
    Female = "Female"

@dataclass(init=True)
class WorldTraits:
    population: list
    pop_mutex: Lock
    time: int
    dead: list
    dead_mutex: Lock
    
def tick_people(people, time):
    for person in people:
        person.tick_time(time)
    
class World:
    def __init__(self, population):
        assert isinstance(population, int), "population must be of type 'int'"
        
        self.traits = WorldTraits(
            population=[],
            pop_mutex=Lock(),
            time=0,
            dead=[],
            dead_mutex=Lock()
            )
        
        self.traits.population = [Person(self, 0.0) for p in range(0, population)]
    
    def birth(self):
        """
        Helper function for the Person object to inform the World that they have
        had a child.

        Returns
        -------
        None.

        """
        # Create a new person
        new_peep = Person(self, 0.0)
        
        #Get our mutex
        self.traits.pop_mutex.acquire()
        
        # Add them to the population
        self.traits.population.append(new_peep)
        
        self.traits.pop_mutex.release()
    
    def death(self, new_dead):
        if new_dead not in self.traits.population:
            return
        
        self.traits.dead_mutex.acquire()
        self.traits.dead.append(new_dead)
        self.traits.dead_mutex.release()
        
        self.traits.pop_mutex.acquire()
        self.traits.population.remove(new_dead)
        self.traits.pop_mutex.release()
        
    
    def attempt_mate(self, person_one, person_two):
        """
        Helper function to handle the resolution as to whether to individuals
        can mate, and attempt to impregnate them if they can

        Parameters
        ----------
        person_one : Person
            Any individual person
        person_two : Person
            Any other individual person

        Returns
        -------
        None.

        """
        # Check if they are female
        one_kids = person_one.traits.gender == Gender.Female
        two_kids = person_two.traits.gender == Gender.Female
        
        # Check if one female and one male
        if one_kids and not two_kids or not one_kids and two_kids:
            # Attempt impregnation on the correct individual
            if one_kids:
                person_one.attempt_to_impregnate(self.traits.time)
            else:
                person_two.attempt_to_impregnate(self.traits.time)
            
    
    def reproduction_cycle(self):
        """
        Helper function to handle the reproduction behavior of the population.
    
        Returns
        -------
        None.
    
        """
        # Shuffle everyone so we can pick peeps at 'random'
        random.shuffle(self.traits.population)
        
        # Make a copy of the population to ensure we don't change under the 
        # iterator
        pop_copy = self.traits.population.copy()
        people_iterator = iter(pop_copy)
        
        # attempt mating in twos
        for person in people_iterator:
            try:
                self.attempt_mate(person, next(people_iterator))
            except StopIteration:
                break
    
    def tick_time(self):
        """
        Helper function to push the world forward one month at a time.

        Returns
        -------
        None.

        """
        world_resolution_time = 0
        person_resolution_time = 0
        
        threads = []
        person_time = real_time.time()
        people = self.traits.population
        num_per_thread = int(len(people) / THREADS) + 1
        thread_data = [people[i:i + num_per_thread] for i in range(0, len(people), num_per_thread)]
            
        
        for t in range(0,THREADS):
            threads.append(Thread(target=tick_people, args=(thread_data[t],self.traits.time, )))
            threads[-1].start()
            
        for t in threads:
            t.join()
        
        person_time = (real_time.time() - person_time) / len(people)
        person_resolution_time = person_time if person_resolution_time == 0 else (person_time + person_resolution_time) / 2
        world_resolution_time += person_resolution_time
                
        world_time = real_time.time()
        # Try and mate
        self.reproduction_cycle()
        # Tick our time forward
        self.traits.time += 1
        world_time = real_time.time() - world_time
        
        timing_vars["WorldResolver"].append(
            world_resolution_time + world_time
            )
        timing_vars["PersonResolver"].append(
            person_resolution_time
            )
    

@dataclass(init=True)
class PersonTraits:
    alive: bool
    ispregnant: bool
    pregnancystart: int
    age: int
    gender: Gender
    money: float

class Person:
    def __init__(self, world, money):
        assert isinstance(world, World), "world, must be of type 'World'"
        assert isinstance(money, float), "money must be of type 'float'"
        
        # Set our world object
        self.world = world
        # Set our initial 'last_time'
        self.last_time = self.world.traits.time
        # Set our initial traits
        self.traits = PersonTraits(
            alive=True,
            ispregnant=False, 
            pregnancystart=None, 
            age=0, 
            gender=Gender[random.choice([g.name for g in Gender])],
            money=money
        )
    
    def spend_money(self, amount):
        """
        Used to check if this person can spend money, and if so, does spend
        the amount passed in.

        Parameters
        ----------
        amount : float
            How much money should I spend?

        Returns
        -------
        bool
            If I spent the money

        """
        spent = False
        
        if(self.money >= amount):
            self.money -= amount
            spent = True
        
        return spent
    
    def advance_automatic_tickers(self, time):
        """
        Helper function to advance the automatic tickers for a person, such as
        age or checking for a pregnancy... Those sorts of things.

        Parameters
        ----------
        time : int
            The current time in the world.

        Returns
        -------
        None.

        """
        # We get older
        self.traits.age += time - self.last_time
        
        # We sometimes die
        if(self.traits.age > LIFE_TIME_MONTHS):
            self.traits.alive = False
            self.world.death(self)
        
        # Sometimes people give birth
        if self.traits.ispregnant and ((time - self.traits.pregnancystart) > GESTATION_TIME_MONTHS):
            self.world.birth()
            self.traits.ispregnant = False
            self.traits.pregnancystart = None
    
    def wants_childeren(self):
        """
        For the world to call when determining if a pregnancy should happen.

        Returns
        -------
        bool
            If I want childeren

        """
        # ~16 to ~35 years old
        wants_childeren = self.traits.age > REPRODUCTIVE_AGE_START
        
        if(self.traits.gender == Gender.Female):
            wants_childeren = wants_childeren and self.traits.age < REPRODUCTIVE_AGE_END
        
        # Can't have childeren if we already have them
        wants_childeren = not self.traits.ispregnant and wants_childeren
        
        return wants_childeren
    
    def attempt_to_impregnate(self, time):
        """
        Impregnate this person(female)

        Returns
        -------
        None.

        """
        if self.traits.gender == Gender.Female and self.wants_childeren() and self.traits.alive:
            self.traits.ispregnant = True
            self.traits.pregnancystart = time
    
    def tick_time(self, time):
        """
        A 'behavior' function to encapsulate a decision point for this person.

        Parameters
        ----------
        time : int
            The current time tick of the world.

        Returns
        -------
        None.

        """
        self.advance_automatic_tickers(time)
        self.last_time = time
        
def get_plot_vars(world):
    men = 0
    women = 0
    alive = 0
    dead = len(world.traits.dead)
    for person in world.traits.population:
        if person.traits.alive:
            alive += 1
            
            if person.traits.gender == Gender.Female:
                women += 1
            else:
                men += 1
    
    return (women, men, alive, dead)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    new_world = World(START_POP)
    
    women_list = []
    men_list = []
    alive_list = []
    dead_list = []
    
    time_list = []
    prev_dead = 0
    for time in range(0,RUN_IN_MONTHS):
        new_world.tick_time()
        stat_time = real_time.time()
        women, men, alive, dead = get_plot_vars(new_world)
        dead_this_month = dead - prev_dead
        prev_dead = dead
        
        women_list.append(women)
        men_list.append(men)
        alive_list.append(alive)
        dead_list.append(dead_this_month)
        
        time_list.append(time)
        stat_time = real_time.time() - stat_time
        
        plot_time = real_time.time()
        plt.plot(time_list, women_list, label="Women")
        plt.plot(time_list, men_list, label="Men")
        plt.plot(time_list, alive_list, label="Alive")
        plt.plot(time_list, dead_list, label="Dead")
        plt.legend()
        plt.draw()
        plt.pause(0.05)
        plot_time = real_time.time() - plot_time
        
        timing_vars["Render"].append(plot_time)
        timing_vars["StatCollection"].append(stat_time)
    
    total_stats = [i for i in range(0,len(timing_vars["Render"]))]
    
    plt.plot(total_stats, timing_vars["Render"], label="Render")
    plt.plot(total_stats, timing_vars["PersonResolver"], label="PersonResolver")
    plt.plot(total_stats, timing_vars["WorldResolver"], label="WorldResolver")
    plt.plot(total_stats, timing_vars["StatCollection"], label="StatCollection")
    plt.legend()
    
    
    

END DAY 3

Hello again! The final day for this week’s development!

First, I need to specify yesterday’s final couple of graphs. Brielle and I went to dinner and came back to my laptop still trying to crunch the numbers with four threads. So I pushed the code to my local git, pulled it on my desktop (which has a bit more compute) and spun it up on 16 threads, which as you can see towards the end took nearly 25 seconds per person to compute. Also notable is the number of people we managed to get to: ~14 million!

I am thinking the last thing to add this week is just more efficiencies in the World Resolver, in which I think we can reduce a significant amount of time by multi-threading the shuffle and mating cycles. The reason this is what I am targeting is we can infer from the stat collection time that any single-threaded operation will take ~1/4 to ~1/3 of the total time of the world resolution. So, splitting all single-threaded operations will reduce our time(duh).

Currently my reproduction cycle code looks like this:

def reproduction_cycle(self):
    """
    Helper function to handle the reproduction behavior of the population.

    Returns
    -------
    None.

    """
    # Shuffle everyone so we can pick peeps at 'random'
    random.shuffle(self.traits.population)
    
    # Make a copy of the population to ensure we don't change under the 
    # iterator
    pop_copy = self.traits.population.copy()
    people_iterator = iter(pop_copy)
    
    # attempt mating in twos
    for person in people_iterator:
        try:
            self.attempt_mate(person, next(people_iterator))
        except StopIteration:
            break

First thing that pops up in my mind is that shuffle operation. I am willing to bet that is very expensive with larger sizes. Our iteration, though single-threaded, is iterating 2 at a time. This will only save us so long and I believe it would be a constant in a Big-O notation break down.

Let’s start by getting a higher resolution timing on each of the parts of the reproduction cycle function. With timers this code looks like:

def reproduction_cycle(self):
    """
    Helper function to handle the reproduction behavior of the population.

    Returns
    -------
    None.

    """
    shuffle_time = real_time.time()
    # Shuffle everyone so we can pick peeps at 'random'
    random.shuffle(self.traits.population)
    timing_vars["PeopleShuffle"].append(real_time.time() - shuffle_time)
    
    pop_copy_time = real_time.time()
    # Make a copy of the population to ensure we don't change under the 
    # iterator
    pop_copy = self.traits.population.copy()
    people_iterator = iter(pop_copy)
    timing_vars["PeopleCopy"].append(real_time.time() - pop_copy_time)
    
    repro_time = real_time.time()
    # attempt mating in twos
    for person in people_iterator:
        try:
            self.attempt_mate(person, next(people_iterator))
        except StopIteration:
            break
    timing_vars["PeopleMate"].append(real_time.time() - repro_time)

Results over 1000 months on 16 threads:

• 

• 

Ok, shuffling people is expensive, but not as expensive as our mating algorithm, so let’s mix the two. We can “shuffle” by simply selecting two random people in the list and chunking at the same time. Below is my rendering of the “chunked” list generator:

def chunked_list_generator(l, chunks=1):
    """
    Helper function to chunk a list into 'chunks' pieces, using the Knuth
    algorithm already present in the random.shuffle method of python

    Parameters
    ----------
    l : list
        The list to chunk up.
    chunks : int, optional
        The number of chunks to split the list into. The default is 1.

    Yields
    ------
    y_list : list
        Each chunk as they are produced.

    """
    # Get our list length and the number of items to place in each
    len_list = len(l)
    number_per_chunk = int(len_list / chunks)
    # First iterator to go chunk by chunk
    for curr_start in range(0, len_list, number_per_chunk):
        y_list = []
        chunk_end = curr_start + number_per_chunk
        # Second iterator to go individual by individual
        for c in range(curr_start,chunk_end):
            # If we have reached the list length break
            if c >= len_list: break
            # Get a random list index above the current point
            j = random.randint(c, len_list - 1)
            # Swap the current with the random item
            l[c], l[j] = l[j], l[c]
            # Append our Yield list
            y_list.append(l[c])
        # Yield the list
        yield y_list

This method should yield each of the split lists from the main population list that we can then start a thread from and use in the global function:

def mate_list(l, time):
    """
    Helper function to handle the resolution as to whether to individuals
    can mate, and attempt to impregnate them if they can

    Parameters
    ----------
    person_one : Person
        Any individual person
    person_two : Person
        Any other individual person

    Returns
    -------
    None.

    """
    for i in range(0, len(l), 2):
        if (i + 1) >= len(l): break
        one = l[i]
        two = l[i + 1]
    
        # Check if they are female
        one_kids = one.traits.gender == Gender.Female
        two_kids = two.traits.gender == Gender.Female
        
        # Check if one female and one male
        if one_kids and not two_kids or not one_kids and two_kids:
            # Attempt impregnation on the correct individual
            if one_kids:
                one.attempt_to_impregnate(time)
            else:
                two.attempt_to_impregnate(time)

In case it isn’t totally clear, this is intended to run inside a thread so the list should be handed to it along with the current time step of the world. Let’s see what that does:

• 

• 

Surprisingly, this did not yield the expected speedup I wanted. I am thinking this has to do with list copying more than shuffling, specifically when I yield back the list, so let’s attempt yielding a couple list indexes that we can use to slice and see what happens…

• 

• 

Ok, so interestingly enough, we see speedup when separating the shuffle from the chunking method, quite a bit of speedup actually. I should mention that I implemented a scaling multi-thread here, where as the population grows we add threads. This reduces the overhead for smaller populations. Splitting 1000 people into 16 groups and starting threads for those groups just doesn’t really make all that much sense. So, every 100,000 people we add a thread to compute them until we get to the max thread count, at which point we just accept the time impact.

Conclusion

Ok, so at the start of this post I set out to create a “balanced” simulation — and in the middle of the post we had a pretty small-scale version that was quite balanced, except when there were too few women in the world to birth children. Towards the end here, we tried to get the full-scale problem working. Though we managed to get considerable speedup, we couldn’t quite get a manageable full-scale simulation going.

Brielle and I have some ideas on how to get speed improvements for a large model. I look forward to exploring those and balancing the simulation further 🙂

Final code for this week 🙂

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
"""
Created on Tue Jan 11 18:13:50 2022

@author: Travis Adsitt
"""

from dataclasses import dataclass
from enum import Enum
from threading import Thread, Lock
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import random
import time as real_time

# Timing variables for benchmarking different portions of code
timing_vars = {
    "Render": [],
    "StatCollection": [],
    "PersonResolver": [],
    "WorldResolver": [],
    "Population": [],
    "PeopleShuffle":[],
    "PeopleCopy":[],
    "PeopleMate":[]
    }

DIVIDER = 1
THREADS = 15
POPULATION_PER_THREAD = 100000

START_POP = 1000
RUN_IN_MONTHS = 1000


REPRODUCTIVE_AGE_START = int(192 / DIVIDER)
REPRODUCTIVE_AGE_END = int(420 / DIVIDER)
GESTATION_TIME_MONTHS = int(9 / DIVIDER)
LIFE_TIME_MONTHS = int(876 / DIVIDER)

class Gender(Enum):
    Male = "Male"
    Female = "Female"

@dataclass(init=True)
class WorldTraits:
    population: list
    pop_mutex: Lock
    time: int
    dead: list
    dead_mutex: Lock
    
def tick_people(people, time):
    for person in people:
        person.tick_time(time)

def chunked_list_generator(l, chunks=1):
    """
    Helper function to chunk a list into 'chunks' pieces, using the Knuth
    algorithm already present in the random.shuffle method of python

    Parameters
    ----------
    l : list
        The list to chunk up.
    chunks : int, optional
        The number of chunks to split the list into. The default is 1.

    Yields
    ------
    y_list : list
        Each chunk as they are produced.

    """
    # Get our list length and the number of items to place in each
    len_list = len(l)
    number_per_chunk = int(len_list / chunks)
    # First iterator to go chunk by chunk
    for curr_start in range(0, len_list, number_per_chunk):
        # y_list = []
        chunk_end = curr_start + number_per_chunk
        yield (curr_start, chunk_end)
        """
        # Second iterator to go individual by individual
        for c in range(curr_start,chunk_end):
            # If we have reached the list length break
            if c >= len_list: break
            # Get a random list index above the current point
            j = random.randint(c, len_list - 1)
            # Swap the current with the random item
            l[c], l[j] = l[j], l[c]
            # Append our Yield list
            y_list.append(l[c])
        # Yield the list
        yield y_list
        """


def mate_list(l, time):
    """
    Helper function to handle the resolution as to whether to individuals
    can mate, and attempt to impregnate them if they can

    Parameters
    ----------
    person_one : Person
        Any individual person
    person_two : Person
        Any other individual person

    Returns
    -------
    None.

    """
    for i in range(0, len(l), 2):
        if (i + 1) >= len(l): break
        one = l[i]
        two = l[i + 1]
    
        # Check if they are female
        one_kids = one.traits.gender == Gender.Female
        two_kids = two.traits.gender == Gender.Female
        
        # Check if one female and one male
        if one_kids and not two_kids or not one_kids and two_kids:
            # Attempt impregnation on the correct individual
            if one_kids:
                one.attempt_to_impregnate(time)
            else:
                two.attempt_to_impregnate(time)
    
class World:
    def __init__(self, population):
        assert isinstance(population, int), "population must be of type 'int'"
        
        self.traits = WorldTraits(
            population=[],
            pop_mutex=Lock(),
            time=0,
            dead=[],
            dead_mutex=Lock()
            )
        self.threads = 1
        self.traits.population = [Person(self, 0.0) for p in range(0, population)]
    
    def birth(self):
        """
        Helper function for the Person object to inform the World that they have
        had a child.

        Returns
        -------
        None.

        """
        # Create a new person
        new_peep = Person(self, 0.0)
        
        #Get our mutex
        self.traits.pop_mutex.acquire()
        
        # Add them to the population
        self.traits.population.append(new_peep)
        
        self.traits.pop_mutex.release()
    
    def death(self, new_dead):
        if new_dead not in self.traits.population:
            return
        
        self.traits.dead_mutex.acquire()
        self.traits.dead.append(new_dead)
        self.traits.dead_mutex.release()
        
        self.traits.pop_mutex.acquire()
        self.traits.population.remove(new_dead)
        self.traits.pop_mutex.release()
        
    
    def attempt_mate(self, person_one, person_two):
        """
        Helper function to handle the resolution as to whether to individuals
        can mate, and attempt to impregnate them if they can

        Parameters
        ----------
        person_one : Person
            Any individual person
        person_two : Person
            Any other individual person

        Returns
        -------
        None.

        """
        # Check if they are female
        one_kids = person_one.traits.gender == Gender.Female
        two_kids = person_two.traits.gender == Gender.Female
        
        # Check if one female and one male
        if one_kids and not two_kids or not one_kids and two_kids:
            # Attempt impregnation on the correct individual
            if one_kids:
                person_one.attempt_to_impregnate(self.traits.time)
            else:
                person_two.attempt_to_impregnate(self.traits.time)
    
    
    
    def reproduction_cycle(self):
        """
        Helper function to handle the reproduction behavior of the population.
    
        Returns
        -------
        None.
    
        """
        shuffle_time = real_time.time()
        # Shuffle everyone so we can pick peeps at 'random'
        random.shuffle(self.traits.population)
        timing_vars["PeopleShuffle"].append(real_time.time() - shuffle_time)
        
        pop_copy_time = real_time.time()
        # Make a copy of the population to ensure we don't change under the 
        # iterator
        pop_copy = self.traits.population.copy()
        timing_vars["PeopleCopy"].append(real_time.time() - pop_copy_time)
        
        repro_time = real_time.time()
        num_threads = self.get_num_threads()
        threads = []
        # attempt mating in twos
        for s, e in chunked_list_generator(pop_copy, num_threads):
            threads.append(Thread(target=mate_list, args=(pop_copy[s:e],self.traits.time, )))
            threads[-1].start()
        
        for t in threads:
            t.join()

        timing_vars["PeopleMate"].append(real_time.time() - repro_time)
    
    def tick_time(self):
        """
        Helper function to push the world forward one month at a time.

        Returns
        -------
        None.

        """
        world_resolution_time = 0
        person_resolution_time = 0
        
        threads = []
        person_time = real_time.time()
        people = self.traits.population
        num_threads = self.get_num_threads()
        num_per_thread = int(len(people) / num_threads) + 1
        thread_data = [people[i:i + num_per_thread] for i in range(0, len(people), num_per_thread)]
            
        
        for t in thread_data:
            threads.append(Thread(target=tick_people, args=(t,self.traits.time, )))
            threads[-1].start()
            
        for t in threads:
            t.join()
        
        person_time = (real_time.time() - person_time) / len(people)
        person_resolution_time = person_time if person_resolution_time == 0 else (person_time + person_resolution_time) / 2
        world_resolution_time += person_resolution_time
                
        world_time = real_time.time()
        # Try and mate
        self.reproduction_cycle()
        # Tick our time forward
        self.traits.time += 1
        world_time = real_time.time() - world_time
        
        timing_vars["WorldResolver"].append(
            world_resolution_time + world_time
            )
        timing_vars["PersonResolver"].append(
            person_resolution_time
            )
    
    def get_num_threads(self):
        num_threads = int(len(self.traits.population) / POPULATION_PER_THREAD)
        
        num_threads = num_threads if num_threads < THREADS else THREADS
        
        num_threads = num_threads or 1
        
        if(num_threads != self.threads):
            print(f"Threads changing from {self.threads} to {num_threads}", flush=True)
            self.threads = num_threads
        return num_threads

@dataclass(init=True)
class PersonTraits:
    alive: bool
    ispregnant: bool
    pregnancystart: int
    age: int
    gender: Gender
    money: float

class Person:
    def __init__(self, world, money):
        assert isinstance(world, World), "world, must be of type 'World'"
        assert isinstance(money, float), "money must be of type 'float'"
        
        # Set our world object
        self.world = world
        # Set our initial 'last_time'
        self.last_time = self.world.traits.time
        # Set our initial traits
        self.traits = PersonTraits(
            alive=True,
            ispregnant=False, 
            pregnancystart=None, 
            age=0, 
            gender=Gender[random.choice([g.name for g in Gender])],
            money=money
        )
    
    def spend_money(self, amount):
        """
        Used to check if this person can spend money, and if so, does spend
        the amount passed in.

        Parameters
        ----------
        amount : float
            How much money should I spend?

        Returns
        -------
        bool
            If I spent the money

        """
        spent = False
        
        if(self.money >= amount):
            self.money -= amount
            spent = True
        
        return spent
    
    def advance_automatic_tickers(self, time):
        """
        Helper function to advance the automatic tickers for a person, such as
        age or checking for a pregnancy... Those sorts of things.

        Parameters
        ----------
        time : int
            The current time in the world.

        Returns
        -------
        None.

        """
        # We get older
        self.traits.age += time - self.last_time
        
        # We sometimes die
        if(self.traits.age > LIFE_TIME_MONTHS):
            self.traits.alive = False
            self.world.death(self)
        
        # Sometimes people give birth
        if self.traits.ispregnant and ((time - self.traits.pregnancystart) > GESTATION_TIME_MONTHS):
            self.world.birth()
            self.traits.ispregnant = False
            self.traits.pregnancystart = None
    
    def wants_childeren(self):
        """
        For the world to call when determining if a pregnancy should happen.

        Returns
        -------
        bool
            If I want childeren

        """
        # ~16 to ~35 years old
        wants_childeren = self.traits.age > REPRODUCTIVE_AGE_START
        
        if(self.traits.gender == Gender.Female):
            wants_childeren = wants_childeren and self.traits.age < REPRODUCTIVE_AGE_END
        
        # Can't have childeren if we already have them
        wants_childeren = not self.traits.ispregnant and wants_childeren
        
        return wants_childeren
    
    def attempt_to_impregnate(self, time):
        """
        Impregnate this person(female)

        Returns
        -------
        None.

        """
        if self.traits.gender == Gender.Female and self.wants_childeren() and self.traits.alive:
            self.traits.ispregnant = True
            self.traits.pregnancystart = time
    
    def tick_time(self, time):
        """
        A 'behavior' function to encapsulate a decision point for this person.

        Parameters
        ----------
        time : int
            The current time tick of the world.

        Returns
        -------
        None.

        """
        self.advance_automatic_tickers(time)
        self.last_time = time
        
def get_plot_vars(world):
    men = 0
    women = 0
    alive = 0
    dead = len(world.traits.dead)
    for person in world.traits.population:
        if person.traits.alive:
            alive += 1
            
            if person.traits.gender == Gender.Female:
                women += 1
            else:
                men += 1
    
    return (women, men, alive, dead)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    new_world = World(START_POP)
    
    women_list = []
    men_list = []
    alive_list = []
    dead_list = []
    
    time_list = []
    prev_dead = 0
    for time in range(0,RUN_IN_MONTHS):
        new_world.tick_time()
        stat_time = real_time.time()
        women, men, alive, dead = get_plot_vars(new_world)
        dead_this_month = dead - prev_dead
        prev_dead = dead
        
        women_list.append(women)
        men_list.append(men)
        alive_list.append(alive)
        dead_list.append(dead_this_month)
        
        time_list.append(time)
        stat_time = real_time.time() - stat_time
        
        plot_time = real_time.time()
        plt.plot(time_list, women_list, label="Women")
        plt.plot(time_list, men_list, label="Men")
        plt.plot(time_list, alive_list, label="Alive")
        plt.plot(time_list, dead_list, label="Dead")
        plt.legend()
        plt.draw()
        plt.pause(0.05)
        plot_time = real_time.time() - plot_time
        
        timing_vars["Render"].append(plot_time)
        timing_vars["StatCollection"].append(stat_time)
    
    total_stats = [i for i in range(0,len(timing_vars["Render"]))]
    
    ignore_timings = [
    # "Render",
    # "StatCollection",
    "PersonResolver",
    # "WorldResolver",
    "Population",
    "PeopleShuffle",
    "PeopleCopy",
    "PeopleMate"
    ]
    for key in timing_vars:
        if key in ignore_timings:
            continue
        
        plt.plot(total_stats, timing_vars[key], label=key)
        plt.legend()

I kept very busy this week and I am excited to share the progress with you all. I mostly focused on the physical clock, so this article should be a little bit more palatable.

Design

So, going into this week, I was planning to create the first fully functioning prototype. With that, I clearly needed a design to base all of this off of. I started brainstorming how both the minute and hour could be displayed on the same clock without interacting. If they were on a flat face, they would collide with each other. After a while I came up with the design below.

With this design, I created a very rough model using the previous prototype that I would be replacing.

Creation

Now, I had the design smoothed out, and was ready to get working. I ran to the store, and got all the supplies I thought I needed (keyword: thought) and got straight to work! I began by cutting out the outer clock face, and sanding it up to 600 grit for a nice finish, I also did this to the base of the clock after cutting the 12×12 panel out.

I realized I didn’t have all the tools needed, and kept running into this issue. Each step seemed to require a new tool, so this delayed progress by quite a bit. While I was making these runs, I found some very fascinating antique mechanical gears. I found this perfect to help the style of the clock. I let the gears soak in a mixture of vinegar, salt, and hydrogen peroxide. This promotes oxidization of the gears, and gave them the patina look I wanted.

Now, with more equipment, I was able to start drilling out the inlays for the stepper motors to set in. To my surprise, this idea worked, I was certain I would end up drilling through and having to deal with blemishes on the front.

The furthest my progress got this week was left at the motor inlays. I have all the supplies I need (I’m hoping) and all the plans made. All that remains is connecting the dots and getting it done.

Thanks for checking in, and make sure to stay posted.