Sandbox, Conway's Game of Life
A small scale self contained sandbox for Conway's Game of Life. Generates an initially random population of cells and then follows the rules of the game to see how the population evolves. Once the initial live cell population has been seeded or drawn then clicking the start button begins the zero player game. Live cells are in black, these cells will die or reproduce each game tick based on the rules below.
Game rules
At each game tick, each cell is evaluated for the following rules based on it's 8 neighbours. After the rules have been calculated then the new population is drawn.
- If the live cell has fewer than two live neighbours it dies.
- If the live cell has two or three live neighbours it lives on to the next generation.
- It the live cell has more than three live neighbours dies.
- If a dead cell has exactly three live neighbours then it becomes a live cell.
This sandbox simulation has walls that prevent cells going futher. Walls are treated as zero neighbours zones. There are shapes that will continue infinitely, if you try small cell sizes you may just see them.
More can be found about this game at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life
Outcomes
There are a few possible outcomes that can occur. The population goes extinct as all the cells have died. The population becomes stable, as cells no longer change. The population continues to change, but starts the to loop. The game can detect simple loops, but the more complex ones it can not.
Options
There are a few options to speed up the simulation or resize so the simulation can be larger. Speed very fast and cell size small are fun to watch.