What is the 'Game Of Life'?

  • Klus
    12th Nov 2014 Member 1 Permalink

    I've been using all materials - Walls, Eletronics, Powered materials, Radioative, Decoration but I have not got a single clue what is the purpose of the Game Of Life section...and I sometimes see things like GOL and MYST in people's saves but I don't understand in what they serve.

  • jacob1
    12th Nov 2014 Developer 0 Permalink
    It's this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life

    In TPT there are a lot of modified versions of it with different rules though. Also, if you watch them in heat display you can see them cool down from 10000K to 0K if they aren't changing. People abuse this fact in saves to either heat up or cool down things.
  • dom2mom
    12th Nov 2014 Member 0 Permalink

    @Lagnadium41 (View Post)

    @jacob1 (View Post)

     What he said. Still life like GOL squares are used for infinite and easy cooling to min. temp. "Moving" life (REPL and DANI are some popular ones to use) can be used for infinite heating to max temp. You can also just in general make cool looking gliders and patterns with it. Here is a good little tutorial showing the basic rules of GOL.

     

  • Klus
    12th Nov 2014 Member 0 Permalink

    @dom2mom (View Post)

     Ok so one of their features is cooling and heating. I don't know what you mean by 'the cell' though

  • Protcom
    12th Nov 2014 Member 1 Permalink

    @Lagnadium41 (View Post)

    GOL stands for Game of Life

    Game of Life is a simulation were you can make awesome looking somehow animations. It's a little bit hard to make whatever you are imagining because you will have to calculate things

     

    it works like this:

    for every Game or Life element, there are two letter, B and S, B=begin and S=stay, after each letter, you are going to find numbers, for example:

     

    for GOL: B3/S23

    for HLIF: B36/S23

     

    So what do they mean?

    B3 means IF there are a died pixel surrounded by 3 live pixels of GOL, that dead pixel is going to be created in the next frame.

    S23 means IF there are a live pixel of GOL surrounded by 2 OR 3 pixels or GOL, it's going to survive in the next frame.

     

    For example, if [y] means a live pixel and [y] means a died pixel, lets see what GOL is going to do

    don't forget, for GOL, B3/S23

     

    first frame

    [1][2][3]

    [4][5][6]

    [7][8][9]

     

    second frame

    [1][2][3]

    [4][5][6]

    [7][8][9]

     


    third frame

    [1][2][3]

    [4][5][6]

    [7][8][9]

     

    This is what they are going to look like in:

    second frame:

    PixelNum.5 is going to be alive because it was surrounded by 3 alive pixels

    PixelNum.8 is going to survive because it was surrounded by 2 alive pixwls

    PixelNum.4 is going to die because it wasn't surrounded by 2 or 3 alive pixels

    PixelNum.6 is going to die because it wasn't surrounded by 2 or 3 alive pixels

     

    third frame:

    PixelNum.5 is going to die because it wasn't surrounded by 2 or 3 alive pixels

    PixelNum.8 is going to die because it wasn't surrounded by 2 or 3 alive pixels

     

    For more information, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life

     

    Edit: Btw cell=pixel

    Edited once by Protcom. Last: 12th Nov 2014
  • Klus
    12th Nov 2014 Member 2 Permalink

    Where's Einstein when you need him?

    Edited once by Lagnadium41. Last: 12th Nov 2014
  • boxmein
    13th Nov 2014 Former Staff 1 Permalink
    @Lagnadium41 (View Post)
    Sure, it sounds all science-y and stuff, but it's actually pretty simple. It's just a bunch of squares lighting up and turning off by how many lights are on around them. For Conway's rule, they light up if there's 3 lights on around them, and they stay on if there's either 2 or 3 lights on. On all other cases the lights turn off. This also has cool math properties like being able to actually perform calculations, and beside that look cool.
  • bowserinator
    13th Nov 2014 Member 0 Permalink

    One question: Why did the devs make so many types of life when there are only 3 useful ones? And is all life just GOL with different tmps or something or are some seperate?

  • mecha-man
    13th Nov 2014 Member 0 Permalink

    @bowserinator (View Post)

    All life is just LIFE whith different ctypes.

    They used to be seperate elements but they combined them to make more room for more useful elements.

    They made so many different types because they can.

  • boxmein
    13th Nov 2014 Former Staff 0 Permalink
    @bowserinator (View Post)
    "Useful" is a subjective term. All of them are interesting, and most of them are cool to study. Finding gliders, glider guns and interesting self-perpetuating phenomena inside different types of LIFE is what actual scientists have spent years doing in the past. And not many games actually include Game of Life variations like ours (also, TPT is one of the few simulators that includes the WireWorld automaton), so TPT offers an interesting opportunity to play with GOL.