Welcome to MASON, a simulator designed for simple-multiagent simulations,
or to be used as a core library inside more sophisticated multiagent
simulators. 

MASON was written by Sean Luke, Gabriel Catalin Balan, and Liviu Panait. 
Additional code and apps were written by Daniel Kuebrich and Sean Paus. 
Much help was provided by Claudio Cioffi-Revilla and Ken De Jong.  MASON
is a joint effort of George Mason University's Evolutionary Computation
Laboratory (in the Computer Science Department), and GMU's Center for
Social Complexity. 

Here are files you should know about. 

LICENSE.  Mason's Open Source License is located at docs/license.html . 
          Please read this first. 

INSTALLATION AND INTRODUCTION.  Installation information, and the root
          point for all documentation, can be found at docs/index.html . 

CHANGES.  The changes from previous versions are listed in the CHANGES file. 

BUGS.  This file contains some well-known bugs in MASON. 

If you have any questions, you have two routes.  First, check out the
MASON-INTEREST-L discussion group on the MASON website.  Second, the MASON
website also lists a help email address you can send mail to if you get
desperate.  The website URL is http://cs.gmu.edu/~eclab/projects/mason/
Please do NOT mail the developers directly.  Post to the discussion group. 

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Quick Start: In the same directory as this file there is a directory
called 'start'.  Inside this directory there are scripts to fire up MASON. 

	Windows:	double-click on 'mason.bat'
	OS X:		double-click on 'mason.1.3.1.command'
				[for fastest 2D demos]
		or	double-click on 'mason.command'
				[for 3D demos]
	Linux/X11:	exec 'mason.sh'

...and pick an application from the pop-up list which appears.  Try
sim.app.heatbugs.HeatBugsWithUI for example. 

To run 3D demos, you have to install Java3D.  To make movies, you have to
install the Java Media Framework (JMF).  If the 'jmf.jar' file (or other
jar file) is not in your CLASSPATH, the scripts will recognize it if you
put it in the 'mason' directory.  To install Java3D or JMF, see the web
page or the documentation. 

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Not So Quick Start:

1. Install Java3D.
2. Install JMF (or add the 'cross-platform' jmf.jar file to your CLASSPATH)
3. Add the 'mason' directory to your CLASSPATH. 
4. If you're running MacOS X and want fast 2D (but no 3D) graphics,
   execute the following:

   alias java \
      /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.3.1/Home/bin/java

5. Run MASON like this:

   java -Xmx200M sim.display.Console

...and pick an application from the pop-up list which appears.  The
-Xmx200M is because one application (Particles3D) won't run unless you
give Java more memory.  You can also run any particular application by
firing up its sim.app.foo.FooWithUI class, such as: 

   java sim.app.heatbugs.HeatBugsWithUI

6. MASON's top-level java packages are the sim and ec directories.  You can
   use the Makefile to build MASON easily from MacOS X/Linux/UNIX.  To see
   the Makefile options, try

   make help

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Where to go from here?:

1. Play with the demos.
2. Poke around in the docs.
3. Try tutorial 0 in the docs (just a tour of what MASON does)
4. Try tutorials 1-7 (which teach how to code MASON apps).  They're
   in sim/app.  
5. If you get stuck post to the discussion group.

