Game of Life
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What does this Model Represent?
This model is an implementation of Conway's Game of Life. Conway's Game of Life is a cellular automaton designed with extremely simple rules that produce surprisingly complex results. Here are the rules for Conway's Game of Life:
- If you have less than 2 neighbors, you die of loneliness
- If you have more than 3 neighbors, you die of overcrowding.
- If you have exactly 2 neighbors, you stay alive if alive.
- If you have exactly 3 neighbors, you stay alive if alive, or are born if not alive.
What are the elements of this Model?
- start - acts as a switch to change the settings for running the game:
- 0 = read initial values from the preset starting point (rows 200)
- 2 = initialize a random setup with a specified density
- 1 = turn the game on
- iteration - informs you of how many steps have been run in the model
- FillDensity - defines what density the game should be filled with when creating a random initialization
- Torus - defines whether the game should run with the sides “wrapped” around (1) or if the edges should be final (0)
- Display Level - Where you can view the game as it runs
- Compute Level - Where the values (1 for filled, 0 for unfilled) are calculated
- Setup Level - Defines the initial settings for the game
- Scratch Space - An extra board to play around with new configurations
How do I use this Model?
Running a preset world:
- Enter 0 into start and hit [Ctrl] [=]
- The model will initialize
- Enter 1 into start and hit [Ctrl] [=]
- The model will begin to run
Running a randomly-generated world:
- Enter a value for FillDensity
- Enter 2 into start and hit [Ctrl] [=]
- The model will initialize
- Enter 1 into start and hit [Ctrl] [=]
- The model will begin to run
What should I expect?
Specific interesting patterns can emerge from the Game of Life. Some formations are stable, and can continue running for the duration of the game. Some formations will run out after a short while.
Download the model file.