"Life"-like grid game (interactive art)

[jrtom]

deviantART: Grid Game

I may actually spend a little bit of time trying to figure out whether it's possible to construct a tile pattern that, if activated correctly, will keep executing indefinitely. (My guess is that it is possible.)

I note with interest that

• the longer runs (the longest I've generated is 2000+) seem to leave a lot of highly ordered detritus behind them. I'm reminded of the arguments for viability through variance...
• my intuition for how things are going to proceed from a given activation is essentially nonexistent. This might change if I spent enough time staring at it, but that's less than clear.

Go nuts, fellow geeks. ;)

Comments

[mrlogic.livejournal.com]

Neat! I'm sure I could waste way too much time doing that....

[lightning-rose.livejournal.com]

Curse you! I have things to do today! :)

[hypgnosis.livejournal.com]

I agree with everything you said, and will note further the fundamental asymmetries that develop in many patterns because a triggered tile always rotates a quarter-turn clockwise, never the reverse, no matter which direction it was triggered from. Also, if you divide up the grid into multiple subsections, each of which are uniform, you can get interesting behaviors at the interface suggestive of both reflection and refraction.

[(Anonymous)]

I think I have a proof that all patterns involving a fininte number of cells eventually halt.

Unfortunately, the little edit box is too small to contain it...