Game of Life

Conway's cellular automaton. Draw cells, load guns and spaceships, change the rules.

0/2challenges

gen 0, 36 alive

Speedgen/s

Rule

Generation: 0
Live cells: 36
Density: 0.4%
Peak: 36

The model

Conway's Game of Life: every cell is alive or dead. Each generation, a dead cell with exactly three live neighbours is born, a live cell with two or three survives, and everything else dies. The edges wrap around, so the board is a torus.

Other rules use the same notation: B for the neighbour counts that cause a birth, S for the ones that let a cell survive.

Try this

The glider gun, found by Bill Gosper in 1970, fires a glider every 30 generations and settles the old question of whether a pattern can grow forever. The acorn is seven cells that take 5,206 generations to settle.

A 120 x 75 wrapping board, so very large patterns eventually collide with themselves. Educational model, not an engineering design or validation tool.

Achievements0/2

Glider +20Launch a glider.
Population boom +30Reach 1,000 live cells.

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Try next

Fourier Drawing

Gridfall

Flocking

Falling Sand