SmoothLifeL
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN points to it whenever Game of Life or cellular automata come up, as the best visual example of a mesmerizing continuous-domain alternative.
What it is
Tim Hutton's demonstration of SmoothLifeL, a continuous version of Conway's Game of Life using floating point values. It shows gliders traveling in any direction, rotating pairs, and elastic cord-like structures, with config details to run it yourself.
Recommended by 4 HN commenters across 4 different months, 2012 to 2022.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec sandworm101 · 2020-04 · on “Game of Life, Simulated in the Game of Life (2012) [video]”
Must see evolution of GOL: "SmoothLife is a family of rules created by Stephan Rafler. It was designed as a continuous version of Conway's Game of Life - using floating point values instead of integers." [this video] [LINK]
Recommends TazeTSchnitzel · 2014-05 · on “Show HN: HTML5 Game of Life in 24-bit RGB”
24 parallel games combined in a way indecipherable to normal human eyes isn't terribly interesting to me. I find SmoothLife more interesting: [this video]
Recommends kjeetgill · 2018-06 · on “Show HN: Yagol, a Game of Life sandbox built with React.js”
If you're mesmerized by the "Game of Life" like I am your going to enjoy the Continuously Domain versions like smooth life. Check out the video[0], and an implementation in python[1] on HN. [0]: [this video] [1]: [LINK]
Recommends yesenadam · 2022-01 · on “29-year-old Conway conjecture settled”
Toffoli[0] & Margolus’[1] Cellular Automata Machines (1987) is the CA bible, I guess. Andrew Adamatsky edited the encyclopedic Cellular Automata (2018). Ed Fredkin's[2] stuff on reversible CA is fascinating. Gerard Vichniac[3] wrote some great papers in the 80s, e.g. Simulating Physics with Cellular Automata (1984). Kenichi Morita[4] papers. Rudy Rucker[5] has written a lot of stuff on 1 and 2D CA, and worked as a CA programmer. Etc. There are a lot of papers. The very common finite element method of solving differential equations and PDEs is basically the same thing as CA - see e.g. Anderson's Computational Fluid Dynamics . Attractors and approximations for lattice dynamical systems by Shen
Cites tim_hutton · 2012-10 · on “Conway's Game of Life, using floating point values instead of integers”
Original post: [LINK] Technical details on the YouTube page: [this video] (Two lots of source code available: Stephan's and mine) Other discussions about this: Reddit: [LINK] Metafilter: [LINK]
Cites hughlomas · 2012-10 · on “Conway's Game of Life, using floating point values instead of integers”
Good job. Any idea why using the parameters specified in the video description of [this video] do not seem to replicate the output of the video? [LINK] I tried the same parameters in the version downloadable at [LINK] and it did not seem to produce similar output to the video either.
Cites cma · 2018-05 · on “Alan Turing’s chemistry hypothesis turned into a desalination filter”
If you are familiar with Conway's game of life, there is also "smooth life" which uses turing style reaction-diffusion equations: [this video]
Cites wolfium3 · 2021-05 · on “Self-Reproducing Cellular Automata”
(not directly related to the article) The cellular automata in the article is a discrete one. For those interested, there are also "continuous" automata [this video] .