To implement something like the bidding you're thinking of (or any
finer-grained competition) you might need to have several sub-iterations to
each timestep... or each timestep is smaller and not sufficient for
completing an "eat" action. Think of pipelined processors, perhaps, as some
inspiration. ;)

For an example of sub-iterations within each timestep: you have claims,
then resolve conflicting claims, then do all resulting actions. In this
case, "losers" of a competition probably wasted their action. If you still
want them to be able to at least do a simpler action or start another
claim, this is where you might want finer-grained steps (and actions).


On Mon, Jun 9, 2014 at 8:24 AM, O Frolovs <
ollie.frolovs.2012@my.bristol.ac.uk> wrote:

> Hello
>
> I am trying to write a predator-prey simulator and I have hit the wall
> with functional design. I would appreciate any help or pointers to relevant
> literature.
>
> The simulator is that of a world populated with fish and sharks. It is a
> discrete-time multi-agent simulation and what I am struggling to think
> about is how to implement the illusion of parallelism in simulation. Since
> the problem is not specifically with OCaml (but the simulator is in OCaml),
> I have kept this email short and put all the details and the code on GitHub:
>
> "On the subject of Toroidal Planets, Sharks and Fish."
> https://gist.github.com/olliefr/fb26ca3a7645dae7e203
>
> It's only a hobby project, but it is of some interest to me, so I would
> really appreciate any advice.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Ollie
>