Frequently Asked Questions

What kind of simulations will I be able to do with GarlicSim?

People often ask this; probably because they do not fully believe it when they read GarlicSim’s description saying that it can handle any kind of simulation. Well, it can. It is very general.

Then people ask:

If it is so general, how is it useful?

There are two answers to that:

1. It is very useful. There are many many features that are common to all kinds of simulations, and which you really don’t want to spend time writing. A few examples of such features: Saving the simulation to file. Browsing the timeline of a simulation like a movie clip while it is still crunching in the background. The option to make manual changes to the simulation world, observe their effects on how the simulation unfolds, and then to be able to revert to the timeline in which the changes were not applied. Changing the arguments to the step function on the fly, etc.
2. If you are interested in only a specific subset of simulations – say, simulations of solid bodies in Physics – Then it will be the wisest to write a framework for that within the framework of GarlicSim. Indeed, part of the work on GarlicSim will include writing these kind of sub-frameworks for the common categories of simulations (e.g., a framework for physics, a framework for game theory, etcetera.)

Does GarlicSim give mathematical tools for simulations?

No.

GarlicSim doesn’t contain any mathematical tools, or any algorithms to be used in simulations. These things are related to the content of the simulation, which is none of GarlicSim’s business.

GarlicSim handles the organization, or “bureaucracy” of the simulation, so you can concentrate on the content. If you need mathematical tools for your simulation there are many Python projects that provide them, and you may use them in your simpack that you run with GarlicSim.