Conway's Game of Life
Controls
- Click or drag over the field to toggle cells. The right mouse button erases them. On touch screens, touch and drag work the same way.
- Space starts and stops the simulation when the field is focused.
- The Step button or the S key (when the field is focused) advances one generation while the simulation is paused.
- Pattern selects a ready-made shape. Click the field to place it, and the selection then returns to Single Cell.
- Random fills about 30% of the field with living cells and stops the simulation.
- Size changes the field from 20×20 to 100×100. It also clears the field and stops the simulation.
- Speed sets how many generations appear per second: from 1 to 60.
What you see here
This is a simulation of Conway's Game of Life, a cellular automaton from 1970. The field is made of cells that are either alive or dead. All cells change at the same time according to the same rules. This produces still shapes, blinking patterns and shapes that move across the field. You set the starting pattern, and then the field changes without your involvement.
Rules:
- Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbors dies.
- Any live cell with two or three live neighbors survives to the next generation.
- Any live cell with more than three live neighbors dies of overpopulation.
- Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbors becomes a live cell.
Who came up with it
The game was invented by the British mathematician John Horton Conway at the University of Cambridge. In October 1970 Martin Gardner described it in the Mathematical Games column of Scientific American, after which the game became known to a wide audience.
Why it is interesting
Among the shapes there are gliders, which move across the field, pulsars, which repeat every 3 generations, and the Gosper glider gun, which keeps launching new gliders. Conway's Game of Life is capable of universal computation. You can choose a shape in the Pattern list and start the simulation.