Understanding main instance and workspaces

So, you’ve installed Ocelot Brain as a library. What’s next?
Let’s talk a bit about how Ocelot Brain works.

Main static instance

Thanks to the SBT tool we had used when building Ocelot Brain, Scala code was translated to suit both Scala and Java applications. One of the key differences we will meet now is that most of the classes became static, i.e. their public fields and methods can now be accessed without creating an object of that class. One of such classes is totoro.ocelot.brain.Ocelot. This class is used to start, stop and interact with the Ocelot’s emulation. You see, Ocelot Brain works similar to a subapplication, which, by the way, freezes the entire Thread it was launched in. So, if you want to make an emulator with GUI, make sure you think about how you will deal with this ‘freezing’ first.

Now, moving back on to practice-related part. To start the subapplication, invoke the initialize() method:

import totoro.ocelot.brain.Ocelot;
/***/
Ocelot.initialize();

Ocelot Brain also supports Apache’s Log4J logger (comes in Ocelot Brain’s .jar). You can use it with the initialize() method like this:

import org.apache.logging.log4j.Logger;
import org.apache.logging.log4j.LogManager;
import totoro.ocelot.brain.Ocelot;
/***/
//It's better if you replace 'this.getClass().getName()' with '<className>.class.getName()', where <className> is the name of the class you're invoking this method in
Logger logger = LogManager.getLogger(this.getClass().getName());
Ocelot.initialize(logger);

Now, when the subapplication part is started, you can freely use any method of Ocelot Brain. Also, remember to invoke shutdown() when you’ll need to stop the emulation:

import totoro.ocelot.brain.Ocelot;
/***/
Ocelot.shutdown();

Workspaces

Workspaces are, as described in source code comments:

All things inside of Ocelot are usually grouped by workspaces. Workspace is like a world in Minecraft. It has it’s own timeflow, it’s own name, random numbers generator and a list of entities (‘blocks’ and ‘items’ in Minecraft). Workspace can be serialized to an NBT tag, and then restored back from it. Workspace is also responsible for the lifecycle of all its entities.

To summarize - workspace is a Minecraft world. To begin work with Ocelot Brain one should also create a Workspace after initializing the subapplication. For example, this code:

import java.io.File;
import java.nio.file.Path;
import totoro.ocelot.brain.workspace.Workspace;
/***/
Path path = new File(System.getProperty("user.dir") + "workspace").toPath();
Workspace workspace = new Workspace(path);

creates a Workspace in a workspace directory in the program’s folder.

After creating a Workspace, you can add event handlers, computers and their components. The ways of doing so will be described in next guides.

Further reading: Use of components and their configuration ->