Story
Conway’s game of life, who hasn't heard of it :) Well for me it has been a toy and a joy for many years. Check Wikipedia for an explanation of Conway’s life. As life on it's own has a tendency to die out, I figured to introduce another life form that interacts with the cellular automata, to keep things going.
- These 'bugs' that I introduced eat the life cells
- Their lifespan is limited
- The life cells have a certain nutrition value that adds up to the bugs fat
- The more they eat, the more they grow - to a certain extent
- As the bugs move, they need energy as well, which is provided by 'burning' their fat
- As they grow heavier, they need relatively more energy to do a step
- When not enough food is available, they can shrink again
- They die when they don't get enough food and then scatter - in life cells :)
- While moving they sense how much food they ate left and right, which steers them in that direction, some often and some less often.
- Some turning stronger and some not
- Normally the bugs will try to not touch each other
- These quantifiable properties are being inherited from their parents, with some deviation
- When they have grown enough, they can find a mate to reproduce with
- If the population of bugs reaches a certain number, they all become infertile until some others have died
- As a last eyecandy, they leave droppings behind in the form of basic life gliders
- The bugs show flocking behaviour by default. This can be turned off in the bug settings
Don't like these buggers :) then go to Greylife
The question is: Will a bug with a certain set of properties evolve as more successful?
Experiment
- Mouse over it to slow things down
- Uncheck ‘Trails’ to see the raw Conway's life
- Switch on the ‘life or bug settings’ and play with them
Life controls
Life can be controlled with the Start, Stop and Step buttons, which are quite self-explanatory.
The following shortcut keys can be used as well:
- down - stop
- up - start
- right - step forward
- insert - toggle ‘trails’
- delete - clear life
- click - draw life