John Conway’s Game of Life The Game of Life is not your typical computer game. It is a cellular automaton, and was invented by Cambridge mathematician John Conway. This game became widely known when it was mentioned in an article published by Scientific American in 1970. The Game of Life was invented by John Horton Conway. See also: Von Neumann, J. Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata. University of Illinois Press, Champaign, IL. 'LifeLine: A Quarterly Newsletter for Enthusiasts of John Conway's Game of Life', nos. 1-11, 1971-1973. Based on a 3D version of mathematician John Conway's 'Game of Life,' the game puts the player in a biological world that is uncannily alive.
CS 420/527 — Biologically InspiredComputation
NetLogo Simulation
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view/download model file:Life.nlogo
WHAT IS IT?
This program is an example of a two-dimensional cellularautomaton. A cellular automaton is a computational machine thatperforms actions based on certain rules. It can be thought of as aboard which is divided into cells (such as square cells of acheckerboard). Each cell can be either 'alive' or 'dead.' This iscalled the 'state' of the cell. According to specified rules, each cellwill be alive or dead at the next time step.
This particular cellular automaton is called The Game of Life.The rules of the game are as follows. Each cell checks the state ofitself and its eight surrounding neighbors and then sets itself toeither alive or dead. If there are less than two alive neighbors, thenthe cell dies. If there are more than three alive neighbors, the celldies. If there are 2 alive neighbors, the cell remains in the state itis in. If there are exactly three alive neighbors, the cell becomesalive. This is done in parallel and continues forever.
There are certain recurring shapes in Life, for example, the'glider' and the 'blinker'. The glider is composed of 5 cells whichform a small arrow-headed shape, like this:
This glider will wiggle across the world, retaining its shape.A blinker is a block of three cells (either up and down or left andright) that rotates between horizontal and vertical orientations.
HOW TO USE IT
The INITIAL-DENSITY slider determines the initial density ofcells that are alive. SETUP-RANDOM places these cells. GO-FOREVER runsthe rule forever. GO-ONCE runs the rule once.
If you want to draw your own pattern, use the ADD-CELLS buttonand REMOVE-CELLS button and then use the mouse to 'draw' in the view.Make sure only one of the two buttons is active -- if they're bothactive, you'll get unexpected behavior.
THINGS TO NOTICE
Find some objects that are alive, but motionless.
Is there a 'critical density' - one at which all change andmotion stops/eternal motion begins?
THINGS TO TRY
Are there any recurring shapes other than gliders and blinkers?
Build some objects that don't die (using 'add-cells')
How much life can the board hold and still remain motionlessand unchanging? (use 'add-cells')
The glider gun is a large conglomeration of cells thatrepeatedly spits out gliders. Find a 'glider gun' (very, verydifficult!).
EXTENDING THE MODEL
Give some different rules to life and see what happens.
Experiment with using neighbors4 instead of neighbors (seebelow).
NETLOGO FEATURES
The neighbors primitive returns the agentset of the patches tothe north, south, east, west, northeast, northwest, southeast, andsouthwest. So 'count neighbors with [living?]' counts how many of thoseeight patches have the living? patch variable set to true.
neighbors4 is like neighbors but only uses the patches to thenorth, south, east, and west. Some cellular automata, like this one,are defined using the 8-neighbors rule, others the 4-neighbors.
RELATED MODELS
Life Turtle-Based - same as this, but implemented usingturtles instead of patches, for a more attractive display
CA 1D Elementary - a model that shows all 256 possible simple 1Dcellular automata
CA 1D Totalistic - a model that shows all 2,187 possible 1D 3-colortotalistic cellular automata
CA 1D Rule 30 - the basic rule 30 model
CA 1D Rule 30 Turtle - the basic rule 30 model implemented using turtles
CA 1D Rule 90 - the basic rule 90 model
CA 1D Rule 110 - the basic rule 110 model
CA 1D Rule 250 - the basic rule 250 model
CREDITS AND REFERENCES
The Game of Life was invented by John Horton Conway.
See also:
Von Neumann, J. and Burks, A. W., Eds, 1966. Theory ofSelf-Reproducing Automata. University of Illinois Press, Champaign, IL.
'LifeLine: A Quarterly Newsletter for Enthusiasts of JohnConway's Game of Life', nos. 1-11, 1971-1973.
Martin Gardner, 'Mathematical Games: The fantasticcombinations of John Conway's new solitaire game `life',', ScientificAmerican, October, 1970, pp. 120-123.
Martin Gardner, 'Mathematical Games: On cellular automata,self-reproduction, the Garden of Eden, and the game `life',',Scientific American, February, 1971, pp. 112-117.
Berlekamp, Conway, and Guy, Winning Ways for your MathematicalPlays, Academic Press: New York, 1982.
William Poundstone, The Recursive Universe, William Morrow:New York, 1985.
To refer to this model in academic publications, please use:Wilensky, U. (1998). NetLogo Life model. http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/Life.Center for Connected Learning and Computer-Based Modeling, NorthwesternUniversity, Evanston, IL.
In other publications, please use: Copyright 1998 UriWilensky. All rights reserved. See http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/Lifefor terms of use.
Program modified 2007-07-25 by Bruce MacLennan to allow savingand loading of complete CA state. Updated for NetLogo 4 on 2008-07-02.
PROCEDURES
Return to CS 420/527 home pageReturnto MacLennan's home page
Sendmail to Bruce MacLennan / MacLennan@utk.edu
Thispage is www.cs.utk.edu/~mclennan/Classes/420/NetLogo/Life.htmlLast updated: 2010-09-07.
Explore a garden with the arrow keys and tend it as you like. Hold X to reset.
Based on Conway's Game of Life.
Conways Garden Of Life (oakreef) Mac Os Catalina
Entry for TweetTweetJam 4 made with PICO-8. This is the entire source code:
| Updated | 18 hours ago |
| Status | Released |
| Platforms | Windows, macOS, Linux, HTML5 |
| Author | oakreef |
| Genre | Simulation |
| Made with | PICO-8 |
| Tags | game-of-life, Gardening, PICO-8 |
Install instructions
.p8 and .p8.png files require PICO-8 fantasy console to run.
Download
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I really enjoyed wandering around the garden trying to coax the plants to grow into interesting shapes.