Conclusion

You should now be able to run the application! Admittedly the name Fart Sniffer is meant to be somewhat amusing. But the technique used could be applied to other kinds of AI path finding/fallowing such as a game where a scent trail is left behind by the player and a pack of wolves or demons use it to track down the players location.

As you can see from running the app the flies are not perfect, they sometimes travel backwards away from a stronger scent to a weaker scent, but with some minor tweaks you could direct the flies to always fallow a more stronger scent. One thing that could be done is to use the alternative way of setting the flies direction provided in the code in part 9.



What this code will do is instead of simply adding the direction of the receptor to the fly's direction it takes 90 percent of the receptors direction and adds a random of 0 to 20 percent of the receptors direction. For example if the fly was facing 0 degrees and the receptors direction is 45 degrees then the new fly direction would be set to anywhere from 40 degrees to 50 degrees or so. This would add a little more detail to the fly's behavior instead of always making hard 45 degree turns all the time.

I hope you have found this tutorial to be useful. The full source code can be downloaded from the Created by X website here FartSniffer.zip If you are unable to download the file contact Created by: X using the contact info provided on the http://www.createdbyx.com/ website and ask for a copy of the file.