Agent monitoring and mouse interactivity in StarLogo Nova

Abstract

StarLogo Nova is a powerful programming environment that allows anyone to easily create a 3D simulation and 3D game using block-based programming language. Due to its intuitive interface and ability to model complex systems, StarLogo is mainly used in primary and secondary school class settings. While StarLogo Nova effectively visualizes a wide range of simulations from biology to economy, the current implementation has two areas for improvement that will help cover more use cases. First, StarLogo Nova currently offers statistics only at the level of agent types. Users can track, for example, changes in population of a given agent type, but cannot track property changes of an individual agent. Second, users cannot interact with individual agents using the mouse. Mouse click enables user to perform targeted interaction with the simulation by triggering an event at the time and location of his or her choice. This thesis outlines agent monitoring feature and design of mouse interactivity that enable users to inspect fine details of a simulation and provide students with higher educational values.