Quick start guide
Video Tutorials
If you prefer video tutorials, you can have a look at the set of video tutorials here
Using the Map Editor
- Run the program. You will be alerted if there is an updated version available for downloaded, and then you will see the Main Menu:
- Cick on “New map data file”
- Select the source for the Map data file. Jim’s world model ships with 4 data files, that contain climate data about the earth in various levels of granularity.
- GlobeData5: 2432 sections
- GlobeData6: 7292 sections
- GlobeData7: 21872 sections
- GlobeData8: 65612 sections
- Map files includes data about the following basic properties for each section
- Elevation (metre)
- BioMass (grams of dry matter per square metre per year)
- Sunshine Fraction (percentage)
- Temperature (Celcius)
- Rainfall (mm)
- Select the file you want to use as the basis for your map and click “Open”
- Give your new map file a name, and click “Save”
- Now you have a map file, that you can edit as you wish. This screen allows you to:
- Add Properties
- Remove Properties
- Change the display colours used for each property
- Edit individual cell values for each property
- Use a brush to apply a set of values by clicking and dragging
- Use a brush to smooth values between their high/low values around the neighbouring pixels
- NOTE: To move around the globe:
- Zoom in and out with the mouse wheel
- Rotate the globe by holding the right mouse button and dragging
- For Example, here I have created a new property “gold”, and made the “To value” yellow.
Now, I’ve put a gold deposit in southern Australia, using the “Use editing brush” feature
- rotate the globe to view southern Australia (by holding the right mouse button and dragging the globe>, and zoom in (using the mouse wheel)
- Scroll down to the property we want to set in the “Use editing brush” property list. Check the “Set?” checkbox, and set the value that you want to set the selected hexes to (I’ve used 100)
- Note: You can use the brush to set multiple properties at once if you like
- Click the “Start brushing” button”, and click and drag around the map to create your gold deposit.
Now, I’ll use the “Smoothing” feature to smooth out the values a bit, I don’t really want a hard border between lots of gold and not much gold, I’d like to smooth it out a bit
- Click the “Start Smoothing” button
- Click and drag as desired to produce your desired effect
- Once you’ve created the map file that you want, Save your changes, and you’ll be directed back to the Main Menu.
- For a detailed walk through, check out the tutorial video on using the map editor.
Simulation Design
- Now that we’ve defined our map file, we’d like to create our simulation. Click “New simulation…”, and you’ll be asked which map file to use. Select the map file that you want to use. For this example I’ll use the map file that I’ve just saved.
- Select the name of you simulation and click “Save”
- The model might take some time at this point to do some processing. Wait as needed, and you will see the Design window for your simulation
General Formulas
- Click on the “General formulas” tab
General formulas determine how populations spread throughout the world, and how they join and split from one another.
There are 4 “General formulas”
- Migrate potential
- Used for every population, every turn, against every adjacent hex. This is used to calculate the suitability of adjacent hexes. If any are suitable hexes (i.e. the value of the formula is >0) then then a migration will occur to the most suitable hex.
- Migrate percentage
- If a migration occurs, the “Migrate Percentage” will determine how the percentage of the population that actually migrate. A value of .05 represents 5%
- Split value
- Run on every population for every turn. If it results in a value >0, then the population will split from it’s identity, and it will create a new identity based in the square that it’s on
- Join value
- When there is more than one population in a cell, there is a possibility that they will join. This equation is run on every combination of pairs in every cell, every turn. If this equation produces a value greater than zero, those two populations will merge.
The following shows a few dummy formulas put in, just to get a simulation running:
- Migrate potential
Hex Formulas
- Click on the “Hex formulas” tab. You will see the initial set of “Hex formulas”.
Hex formulas allow you to define equations to vary the hex properties. You can set equations to modify the properties for:
- terrain
- elevation
- rainfall
- temperature
- biomass
- sunshine
- latitude
- shore
- plus any custom hex properties that you’ve added in the map editor
- plus you can add as many custom properties as you like, they don’t need to be defined in the map file
Each hex property has the following properties:
- Initial formula (calculated on startup)
- Update turns (“Update this value every # turns””)
- Update formula (How to calculate the update to the value)
- Notes (just some text, no functional consequence)
In the screenshot below, I’ve
- added a property “fertility”, which I’ll calculate as a function of the other available hex properties available, elevation *0.02 + rainfall *.01
- set it to update every 100 turns
- set it to gradually decline over time (the value will lose .01 every 100 turns)
Population Formulas
- Click on the “Population formulas” tab. You will see the initial set of “Population formaulas”
Population formulas allow you to define properties and set their values according to equations. The set of population properties that you have at the start of a simulation are as follows:
- size
- size of a population, the number of people
- dominance
- used during a population merge. When there are two populations that are merging, the population with the higher dominance will be kept, whereas the other will be merged into the other one, losing its identity
- capdistance (Auto calculated, no need to put any formulas in)
- the number of hexes a population is from its capital city
- seamigrate
- The number of hexes a population will be able to migrate over sea hexes
- identityage (Auto calculated, no need to put any formulas in)
- The number of turns since a population changed identity
In addition to these initial values, you can add as many as you like
Each Population property has the following properties:
- Update formula (calculated each turn)
- Merge formula
- There’s a default merge formula for the non-autocalculated population properties, so you don’t need to put anything for the merge formulas unless you want to override the defaults.
- The default for “size” is simply to add the two populations together
- The default for the other properties is to calculate a weighted average, weighting the values by the respective sizes of the populations.
- Compute order
- The default compute order is top to bottom, but if you wish the compute order to be different you can do it here. Computation is done from low value to high value.
- Notes (just some text, no functional consequence)
In the screenshot below, I’ve done the following:
- added a simple update formula to “size”, where populations grow by 1% each turn
- added an update formula to dominance, basically moving it randomly each update
- adding .01 hexes to a population’s sea migrate value each turn.
- size
- For a detailed walk through, check out the tutorial video on designing a simulation.
Running a simulation
- After loading or creating your simulation, you’ll see an option in the simulation design window for “Save and run”. This will take you to the “Run window”
- Add some populations
- Click on the “Click to add populations” button
- Click on some cells to add initial populations
- Click on the “Stop adding populations” button
- Either step through turn by turn or set it to run continuously
- To step through turn by turn, click the “Take one turn” button
- To set it to run continuously click “Play”
- When a simulation is stopped you have the option of going back or forward one turn at a time to a maximum of 10 turns back
- Setup some breakpoints if you like. You have the option of breaking on
- a value goes a certain %age out of range
- A value goes to a certain point
- Any value reaches infinity
- Note: Make sure you click the button to activate the stop point after you add a value. The stop point button will have a blue border if the stop point is active, and the inputs will be disabled, as per the following image.
6. If you want to save or load a world state, click on the “save world state” and “load world state” buttons