Mice in Love V1.0 (C) by Guido Wegener 2.2.1990 Eisenacher Str. 2 5300 Bonn 1 West Germany This program is Freeware and may be copied as long as this .doc-file is included and no profit is made by distributing. You may use parts of this program if you mention the author. LoveMice is the short form of Mice In Love, but isn't much shorter. So much for the name, now let's look at the program ! The idea is from Scientific American (Spektrum der Wissenschaft). There are a number n of mice sitting in equal distance on a circle. (I just want to give an example, don't try it with real mice, but if you do, please send me some photos of your experiments.) All of these mice are gay and every mouse loves it's neighbour in a way that every mouse k loves the mouse k+1, mouse n-1 loves mouse 0 (we little computer people count different than humans, you see). The room with the mice is very dark and they can't smell each other. From time to time the lights go on. At this moment every mouse looks for the one it loves and the computer draws a line in the direction in which the mouse looks. When the lights go off again, every mouse runs in the direction of it's mate with a speed relative to the distance. That causes the mice to run in a very cute pattern until all of them meet in the center and ... (remember, they are gay !). This is what the computer does : It draws some points on a circle and moves them a fix fraction of the distance to the next point and draws the connecting line between them in the color of the first point of the two. This is what the computer wants to know : a) the part of the distance each mouse moves each time (distance/x where x is an integer number you give the computer) you should use values between 2 (calculated as 1/2) and 100 (=1/100) b) the number of mice you can use numbers between 2 and about 32 (I don't know, I wrote the program long ago) c) the way the mice are connected That is difficult to say, let's try it this way : The mice are numbered from 0 to n-1. The start positions are also numbered from 0 to n-1 in the way the numbers on a watch are numbered (you know, analog watches !). You start with mice 0 => so the first number is 0. Then you think about at which position of the mouse it loves and tell the computer about the start number. Go on like that until you have got a row of n numbers where every number from 0 to n-1 is used once. An example : You want 7 mice and each mouse should love the next but one (<- my dictionary told my to say it that way but I mean "übernächst"). The mice are sitting this way : 0 6 1 5 2 4 3 0 loves 2,2 loves 4,4 loves 6,6 loves 1,1 loves 3,3 loves 5 and 5 loves 0. How the computer wants to hear it : 0,2,4,6,1,3,5 (Just list the positions of the mice in the order in which they love each other.) Isn't it easy ? d) the colors in which the lines between the mice should be drawn Just list the R,G,B values of the color of each mouse from 0 to n-1. Thar means that every mouse needs a color consisting of 3 values from 0 to 15 describing the intensity of red, green and blue. That will lead to n*3 numbers. This is how to tell it the computer : Make a text (ASCII) file with all the values we talked about before in that order. Use some not numerical characters between the numbers. An example : TUBEWINGS (<- the name doesn't matter) data for Mice In Love by Guido Wegener of CLUSTER (<- that doesn't matter, too, but I like it) 15 (<- that means 1/15 and is the fraction of the distance each mouse moves) 8 (<- number of mice) 0,4,2,6,7,3,5,1 (<- the way in which the mice are connected, in this case : mice 0 loves mice 4,4 loves 2,2 loves 6 ...) 2,11,10 (<- color of mouse 0 (Red=2,Green=11,Blue=10)) 6,9,15 (<- color for next mouse) 8,15,15 (<- and again a color) 8,11,14 (<- is this boring) 8,11,14 (<- stupid) 8,15,15 (<- stupid cupid) 6,9,15 (<- a color) 2,11,10 (<- color of mouse at position n-1) end of this file The number used in the parentheses are illegal and would cause the computer to smoke and smell bad, so don't use any numbers except the ones the computer wants ! Save this file anywhere (not to NIL: or PRT:). Then call LoveMice from the CLI whith one parameter which is the path from the current directory to the ASCII file. This is what to do if it doesn't work : Get lost ! This is how to use the demo-patterns : There should be some files (x,uhu,triangel,fighter,...) somewhere on this disk. They could be in the same directory as this file or in a subdirectory called something like 'Mice'. For example : lovemice mice/tubewings will call Mice In Love an draw the pattern tubewings in the directory mice Exit (why should you do that) by clicking the close gadget. Don't be angry if you find some errors in this .doc file, I am running MandelMountains from Fish 295 in the background and it slows down the computer quite a bit and I am typing so fast. ISN'T THIS PROGRAM USELESS ? :-) . . _ _ ª ð If you can read this, we (CLUSTER (=CLUb of the maSTERs)) managed to release some of our products, so let's party ! __ | | \/ | | | | ____ \ / | | | | / \ | | |______| | | |champ-| | agne | |------| -­­­­­­- Bye buy, stay loony =-) and help the PD-scene :> . (And use crazy chars like ­×x±æßð£å°©®þ¤µ¡ø¶»«·¾½¼°³@¹) CLUSTER is a legal programming formation mainly working on Amiga, coding Freeware (and perhaps some commercial programs later). CLUSTER was founded on January 1989 with the following members: André Wichmann, Guido Wegener, Martin Rosenkranz, Martin Baumann, Philipp Witkop, Stefan Kaspari, Stefan Lietzow and Giang Nguyen. Then we reduced our members to the best and got a new programmer. Now, on 20.3.1990, we have the following members: André Wichmann Coding Guido Wegener Coding Martin Mohr Coding Martin Rosenkranz Graphics Philipp Witkop Digitizing If you want to contact any member of CLUSTER (legal !!!) then write to our address: André Wichmann Posener Weg 4 5300 Bonn 1 West Germany André will give the letter to the addressed member. Send errors, corrections, supporting ideas, criticism, enthusiastic fan- letters and money to the author: Guido Wegener Eisenacher Str. 2 5300 Bonn 1 West Germany