Today we will be learning the tool StarLogo, which we can use to build 2-dimensional worlds. With StarLogo you can model decentralized systems, systems that are organized without an organizer, such as bird flocks, traffic jams, and ant colonies.

StarLogo is installed on all the machines in our classroom. You can download a version here for your computer if you want.

Unfortunately, we won't be able to save our work and put it on web pages. Instead you will have to save any projects you create on the local disk and then transfer them over to your acpub account before leaving class. If you don't do this, it is not guaranteed that they will be saved. Since the project isn't on a web page, you will submit your projects electronically from your acpub account. More on that later.

Getting Started

First you should check out up to 5 systems created using StarLogo. You will bring up StarLogo projects and also a web page that describes the projects.

To bring up the web page click on StarLogo 1.1, then select Documentation. Then click on Sample Projects. Select one of the projects. It will give you a description of the project. Read this description, you can ignore the source code for now.

Now start up the same project under StarLogo. Click on StarLogo 1.1 again, then select Sample Projects and the corresponding project (.slogo file). The project should appear. Try it out.

To look at another project, you can select File in the Control Center Window and select Close to close the current project (when asked to save changes, say NO, you don't want to modify the sample projects). Again under File, select Open Project to open another sample project to look at.

You should look at 5 projects total, one from each of the 5 groups Biology, Graphics, Math, Physics and Social Systems. You should wait and look at the others later when you understand more about how to write a project.

Learning how to write a StarLogo project

At this point you will follow instructions to learn how to create your own StarLogo project.

Go back to the Documentation page (either back in the browser, or start StarLogo again and select Documentation).

1. Startup an empty StarLogo project (or Close Project if there is one already there).

2. On the Documentation page under Help, go through the Getting Started web page. Sections 1-3 will tell you about StarLogo. Skip section 4 (viewing sample projects, you've already done this). Section 5 will take you through steps in creating a Starlogo project. In addition to the commands you are asked to type, you should experiment some and try other variations (such as different numbers and different colors) Skip section 6.

   When you are finished with the Getting Started page, save your project on the D drive under the cps049s directory (make sure this directory is there, and if not create it first) under the name "simple1" (that is the number 1), the .slogo extension will automatically be added to the name.

   The cps049s directory on the D drive is temporary, you should copy your file to your acpub account. On your acpub account, create a directory under your group49s directory called starlogo. You can put your simple1.slogo and other starlogo files here.

3. Below are the commands/concepts you learned about today. You should create a web page called SLcommands.html in your public_html/cps49s directory. For each command below you should do the following:

   1. list the command

   2. give an example of the command that is different than what you did in the Getting Started document

   3. give an explanation of the example

   You can get more info on any command under the Help commands page.

   Commands:

   • crt

   • fd

   • seth

   • pd

   • pu

   • ilist (not a command, but used by other commands)

   • repeat

   • cg

   • to

   • end

   • ca

   • ask-turtles

   If you finish before class is up, you can look at other sample StarLogo projects.

   Be sure to link the new web page you created for this classwork to your CPS 49s web page.