Game of Life

I was bored and fiddled with some cellular automata this afternoon (feel free to download the 32k program that I wrote in a few minutes, but you’re probably better off with Mirek’s java version which is far more refined). I like the idea that you can get order and pattern out of chaos with the simplest of rules.

One of the fun things you can do with mine though is press “X” while you’re running it to generate random automata rules, and then try them out with various random seeds… Like I said, it really is amazing how much pattern and “life” you can get from the simplest rules.

zencell-1 zencell-2 zencell-3 zencell-4

Edit/update — I quickly tossed together a new version of this that uses a mouse-controlled interface. It’s fun to play with and it’s really quick and easy to fiddle with the rules. No keyboard controls; just click. Download here: zencell2.exe (win32, about 40k).

zencell2

3 Comments

  1. So when are you going to learn Cocoa and starting writing apps for your OS X readers? ;)

    Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 8:32 am | Permalink
  2. Shannon wrote:

    When someone buys me a Mac :)

    But seriously, everything I write should run fine under WINE… They’re really simple console aps. I’ve tested some of them in an old version of Wine under Ubuntu and they all work (the Craigslist tool, etc).

    Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 8:54 am | Permalink
  3. ELY M. wrote:

    can you provide me with source code?

    Wednesday, February 18, 2009 at 1:08 am | Permalink
Wow Shannon, that's really annoying! What is it, 1997 on Geocities? Retroweb is NOT cool!

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