README.md

MecaCell

MecaCell is an open-source artificial life platform integrating several cellular physics engines for agent-based simulation. It is designed with morphogenetic engineering in mind and tries to stay not too invasive, lightweight and easily extensible. It comes in the form of two libraries :

• MecaCell is the core library which contains everything you need to run simulations in console or with your own viewer. It is written in C++11 and has no dependencies other than the C++ standard library.
• MecaCellViewer is a viewer library. It is written in C++, uses OpenGL and depends on Qt5.

Install

You will need cmake 2.8+, a relatively recent C++ compiler (C++11 support is required) and Qt 5.2+

• Clone this repository
• cd in it and create a build directory
• cmake .. && make && make install

Basic usage & ultra simple example

You need at least one cell type.

Your cell type must inherit from the MecaCell::ConnectableCell (it uses the curriously reccuring template for performances reason, so the inherit line is a little bit more verbose):

class MyCell : public MecaCell::ConnectableCell<MyCell> {

a cell is required to have at least 2 methods:

	// returns the adhesion coef (between 0 & 1) with the cell *c
	double getAdhesionWith(const MyCell *c) { return 0.9; }

	// update routine, called at every loop iteration
	// returns a pointer to a new cell if division
	// returns nullptr if not
	MyCell* updateBehavior(double deltaTime) {
		// access inputs here
		return nullptr;
	}
};

Let's now create a scenario:

class MyScenario {

A scenario needs to contain a MecaCell::BasicWorld<cell_type,integration_mode> and let the viewer acces to it:

	using World = MecaCell::BasicWorld<MyCell, MecaCell::Euler>;
private:
	World w;

public:
	World &getWorld() { return w; }

It should also contain at least these 2 methods:

	// called at initialisation
	void init(int argc, char** argv) {
		// here we just add a cell at (0,0,0);
		w.addCell(new Cell(MecaCell::Vec::zero()));
	}

	void loop(){
		// this code is called before every frame by the viewer
		// here we just call the world update method, which will handle all the physics
    // and call our MyCell::updateBehavior() method
		w.update();
		// handle events, plug your own methods call, whatever you want goes in this method...
	}
};

Now for the main.cpp:

#include <mecacell/mecacell.h>
#include <mecacell/viewer/viewer.h>
#include "myscenario.h"
#include "mycell.h"

int main(int argc, char **argv) {
	MecacellViewer::Viewer<MyScenario> v;
	return v.exec(argc, argv);
}

That's it for our extremely basic example. Now you can compile your project (don't forget to link to mecacell library and mecacellviewer + Qt) and run it. You can run it without the viewer by just repeatedly calling yout scenario::loop() method (don't forget to init() first) instead of creating a viewer instance.