Skip to content

docs: RESEARCH.md and README have drifted from the code they describe #122

Description

@dmccoystephenson

Two documentation files now describe behavior the code no longer has (or never listed).

1. RESEARCH.md §1.7 and §1.8 describe pre-#119 mechanics

RESEARCH.md was added in e3801c6 (merged as #118) describing the implementation as it stood, and the very next commit — 0d13dc1, "Align simulation mechanics with RESEARCH.md" (merged as #119) — implemented two of the things those sections said were missing, without updating them.

  • §1.7 (Optimal foraging theory) says: "Apex's movement (src/actionhandler/moveActionHandler.py) is currently undirected/random rather than seeking food or mates." It is no longer — MoveActionHandler.searchForFood / countEdibleEntities now keep an entity in a patch that still has food and otherwise sample up to randrange(1, 5) neighbours and move to the richest one, with a source comment citing this very section.
  • §1.8 (r/K selection theory) says: "reproduction chance (chanceToReproduce) is currently a single global constant shared by every species." It is no longer — LivingEntity.reproductiveRate is now a per-species multiplier (Rabbit 2.5, Chicken 2.0, Pig 1.3, Fox 0.8, Cow 0.5, Wolf 0.4) applied in Simulation.shouldEntityReproduce, again with a source comment citing this section.

Both sections read as forward-looking ("if movement is ever made smarter…", "if per-species reproduction/lifespan tuning is added…") when the work is already done. Suggest rewriting them to describe the implemented mechanic and what research question remains open.

2. README.md's control table is missing two keys

SimulationScreen.__handleKeyDownEvent handles two keys the table does not list:

  • e — toggle entity eyes (Config.eyesEnabled)
  • Escape — alias for pause (same branch as space)

Separately, the table's entries for q and f11 describe behavior that does not currently work — see #121 and #120.

Found while verifying the architecture of this repository for an RFC in Preponderous-Software/rfcs; verified against dc1fa06.

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    No labels
    No labels

    Type

    No type

    Projects

    No projects

    Milestone

    No milestone

    Relationships

    None yet

    Development

    No branches or pull requests

    Issue actions