A simple representation of John Horton Conway's Cellular Automata, simply called LIFE. The matrix was inspired by Akalicki's matrix class with some modifications.
In order to run the program, there is a CMakeList file to build and make the executable. Be sure to have Cmake installed and to create the folder where the build will be generated.
For example:
mkdir cmake-build && cd cmake-build
cmake ../This will compile the source code outputting a single executable inside the build folder called LIFE.
| Command | Description |
|---|---|
| X | Next generation |
| Z | Previous State |
| N | New Board |
| LMB | Create or Destroy Life |
| 0 | Create an Empty Board |
Cellular Automatas were fascinating for the mathematician Conway (and for me) and he wanted to model the simplest configuration in which these automatas could explode into the infinite power of a universal computer. This would reduce the von Neumann's 29 states for a self-reproducing automata to a set of only 2 - i.e. alive or dead, zero or one, on or off.
This model, named LIFE, would have a cumbersome configuration of cells in a grid; but, if were a universal machine, it could eventually mimic the workings of the most powerful supercomputer. It's name came from it's rules, which are representations of survival, birth and death and would generate everything there are in the artificial world; from it's physics to it's meaning.
Under these considerations, eventually was develped a set of rules that would represent a Universe capable of generating Life:
- Configuration: Life occurs on a virtual checker-board. The squares are called cells. They are in one of two states: alive or dead. Each cell has eight possible neighbours, the cells which touches its sides or its corners.
- Life and Death: If a cell on the checker-board is alive, it will survive in the next time step (or generation) if there are either two or three neighbours also alive. It will die of overcrowding if there are more than three live neighbours, and it will die of exposure if there are fewer than two.
- Born Rule: If a cell on the checker-board is dead, it will remain dead in the next generation unless exactly three of its eight neighbours are alive. In that case, the cell will be born in the next generation.
With the rules set, the approach for creating the code resolved around implementing those in a graphical interface which could be used to understand and experiment the behaviour of it's cells organized in a grid. Trivially, it was implemented as a matrix whose elements store the information for each cell; that being alive or dead.
For whoever wants to try it out, I have some quests for your :)
Try to find the following stable shapes:
- Block, ship, longboat, beehive, loaf, canoe and pond;
- Toads, blinkers, clocks and traffic lights;
- Gliders, glider cannons and train.
The shapes on item one are stable and do not change if not perturbe, while the shapes on item 2 change each time-step but alternate between a regular set of shapes. On the other hand, shapes on the 3rd item were used to prove that LIFE is a universal computer, and they generate other shapes and can be used in computations within the Universe of LIFE.
The project is far from perfect, it lacks optimization and it's not fully configurable through the interface, so in this section are pointed some improvements that can be done to the project and you are free to try it out:
- Optimization: by the fact that a matrix is used, most of the algorithms run in
$O(n^2)$ complexity which can easily affect the runtime required each time-step. A solution would be using another data structure that could mimic a matrix's behaviour while also adding concurrent processing on the operations. - Human-Computer Interaction: create a better user-interface with instructions and editable environment fully contained in itself.
This is a free-time project developed in 1 week during my coffee breaks, so there is space for a lot of improvements which can be achieved fairly easy by changing and incrementing the code. With that being said, for anyone with lots of spare time and passion for this crazy stuff, you are invited to modify and use this software for whatever you want.
The project was developded in a Linux environment on GCC 13.2.1 and CMAKE version 3.28.1 on ClionIDE.
The inspiration for working on this project came by reading: Steven Levy. 1993. Artificial life: A report from the frontier where computers meet biology. Random House Inc.