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. Here it has become my vehicle te learn javascript and jquery.
How to use this lab
When loaded, it starts running by itself. The graph shows the amount of 'live' cells in time. Check Wikipedia for an explanation of Conway’s life.
Experiment
- One can experiment with the (initial random) fill ratio, follow the population in the graph, step back through the history of interesting figures you might see.
- Change the cell size with the radio buttons labeled ‘1’, ‘2’, ‘4’ and ‘8’ to zoom in or out. When zooming in, the area will be cropped though.
- Uncheck ‘Trails’ to see the raw Conway's life. This will be done automatically when you start navigating in the history.
- Switch on the ‘life rules’ and play with them.
- A nice series of presets for the life rules can be chosen from with the dropdown selector
- To experiment with your own start cells, you can draw them in the ‘life area’: hit stop, hit clear, click in the white area at will. When done hit step or start.
It is possible though, to draw new life while it is still running. Click close to static pieces of life and look what happens.
Draw your own life cells
Life controls
Life can be controlled with the Start, Stop, Step and Step back buttons, which are quite self-explanatory.
The following shortcut keys can be used as well:
- down - stop
- up - start
- left - step back
- right - step forward
- home - back to first step
- return - restart life
- insert - toggle ‘trails’
- delete - clear life
- click - draw life