Turmite

Introduction

This program is a variation of Langton's Ant, a type of 2-dimensional Turing machine, in which more states are present, allowing for more complex patterns. This was made with Java using Processing 3.

Examples

LR movement pattern (Langton's Ant)

RLLR movement pattern

LLRR movement pattern

LRRRRRLLR movement pattern

RRLLLRLLLRRR movement pattern

Code

Global variables

grid_length is used to set the length of each grid square.
movement is the array that stores the movement pattern which can be manually set by the user, while grid_color randomly sets the colors that correspond with each movement rule in the pattern.
dir governs which direction the turmite originally faces.
dps and fps both control the speed of the turmite. The difference, however, is dps sets how many times the turmite moves within one frame, while 'fps' dictates the amount of frames played in one second.

void setup()

setup() is the function that automatically runs when the program is initialized.
size() determines the canvas size.
noStroke() disables borders for anything drawn.
frameRate() sets the frame rate.
background(0) sets the background color of the canvas to black. The color can be changed by using other RGB values (e.g. background(255, 255, 255)) will set the background color to be white).
Both the movement and grid_color arrays are instantiated in this function.

void draw()

draw() is a function that will, by default, automatically loop after the last line. This is also the function used to move the turmite depending on the movement pattern.

Further Improvements and Modifications

One improvement would be to fix the problem with the counting of steps since it is double counted when moving to a black tile. Another improvement would be to add more keyboard functionality, such as pressing R to restart.

gmsdelmundo / turmite