Thread for your miscellaneous posts and discussions

[NNlk05]

There is one non-spam user in that screenshot (lk050807 #2).

Ha. My old alt when I forgot my password...
(Page 40)

[synperiplanar]

is there a Sandbox game where someone posts a pattern and you have to find a parent of it in B3/S23?

[NNlk05]

is there a Sandbox game where someone posts a pattern and you have to find a parent of it in B3/S23?

No. I don't think so.

[TheWayOfTheCon]

is there a Sandbox game where someone posts a pattern and you have to find a parent of it in B3/S23?

Even if there was, it wouldn't work because programs like LLS can find parents quickly, and there isn't any actual way to tell if someone used a program or not to find the parent.

[synperiplanar]

Even if there was, it wouldn't work because programs like LLS can find parents quickly, and there isn't any actual way to tell if someone used a program or not to find the parent.

i wouldnt mind

[NNlk05]

Why didn't Life-like cellular automata get invented much earlier? The rules are incredibly simple, and it doesn't need computers to play.

This is a really good question that I want to bring up again (mostly because I've been wondering the same thing). I half-expect we'll find a medieval scroll with a drawing of a glider sometime or another. Anyone with pieces and the idea of B3/S23 should be able to get as far as JHC et al. Moreover, the laws of CA are consistent throughout the universe. So we may receive a radio message containing a (13, 7)c/42 in CGoL...

[hotcrystal0]

is there a Sandbox game where someone posts a pattern and you have to find a parent of it in B3/S23?

Does this count?

[synperiplanar]

Does this count?

i would prefer that it's not a chain of endless predecessors (it gets out of hand pretty quickly)

[J5L]

When i was trying to complete the p17 pentadecathlon hassler, I was thinking of a true p17 gun. It doesn't exist though. But i need a pseudo period p17 gun because the p17 corner dot sparker doesn't work because of 2 blocks interacting and the pip from phase 12 interacts with one of the eaters. I do not know why I thought about a true p17 gun.

[hotdogPi]

Moved to https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7469

[Aleph]

I have been using Golly for I believe over a decade now, and it is only today that I learned that you can press F2 through F7 to draw/pick color/select/move/zoom in/zoom out. In the past, I would just spam "c" until it cycled to the right tool, or click the button. :skull:

[hibiscus]

The central portion of the mibombehemoth

mibombehemothcenter.png (239.54 KiB) Viewed 354 times

[TheWayOfTheCon]

It's not exactly the time of year or the season, but I discovered this, and I really like it, so I'm going to show it to you anyway.

Code: Select all

#C WILL COVER YOUR WHOLE SCREEN
x = 283, y = 33, rule = B/S
132b4o$129b3o4bo$128bo7b2o$127bo10b2o$127bo12b2o$126bo14bo$126bo14bo$
125bo15bo$124b2o16bo$123bo19bo$121b3o19b2o$120b2o23bo98bo$120bo25bo96b
3o$119bo26b2o92b3o2b2o$119bo27bo90b2o6b2o$118bo28b2o88b2o8b2o$117bo30b
2o86bo11b5o$116bo33bo84bo16b8o$114b2o34b2o82b2o23b3o$114bo37b2o79b2o26b
3o$113bo39b4o76bo30b2o$112bo43b2o74bo32bo$24b8o78b3o45b2o57b4o11bo33b
o$20b4o8b3o12b5o57b2o48b3o51b5o3b5o5b2o34bo$18b2o15b5o2b5o4bo56b2o52b
o49b2o11bo3b2o36b2o$17bo22b2o10b3o50b3o54b2o46b2o13b5o38b2o$14b3o37b5o
43b3o58b2o45bo58b2o$12b2o45b17o24b2o63b3o41b2o60b2o$10b2o64b3o20b2o67b
28o3b11o62b3o$6b4o68bo19b2o95b6o73b8o$2b4o72b4o14b2o184bo$2o79b3o8b4o
$84b9o!
#C [[ SNOW COLOR BACKGROUND 100 100 200 COLOR ALIVE 230 230 230 X -1 Y -10 ZOOM 5 POPUPWIDTH 1480 POPUPHEIGHT 605 ]]

Just watch as the snow falls down and covers the "landscape".

[MDA]

The two most recent users have spam pages listed as their websites. […]

[…]

Some problems with spam again. The two users in question are MaritimeBarry and autoactivepaul.

[hibiscus]

A MIRACLE HAS OCCURRED

MIRACULOUS.png (120.76 KiB) Viewed 143 times

[MDA]

The two most recent users have spam pages listed as their websites. […]

[…]

Some problems with spam again. […]

Some problems with spam again. The two users in question are kevinflame47 and iciclecanon.

[TheWayOfTheCon]

For the rest of your life, you can only do one thing in cellular automata. Would you rather:

• Only investigate B1 rules
• Search for the Pi-R-Squared spaceship

[R2INT]

These are my general stages for rulegolfing in 3 states. 2 states compress these stages quite a lot, but it's easier to observe in 3 states or R2VN.

Stage 1 (0%-5%): Adding small, independent patterns early in the rule is easy, and soup dynamics are under total control and usually die out quickly in early rulegolfing. Scrambling the states helps suppress unintended reactions.
Stage 2 (5%-20%): Transition collisions and unintended patterns become noticeable. For example, you might find an unintended replicator, new speed, or another chaotic reaction while engineering the next pattern. Rule construction becomes slightly more constrained, especially around the edges of the reactions, but still easy.
Stage 3 (20%-40%): It gets harder to golf evolutionary sequences in reverse. Construction of stable splitters and controlled reactions become more constrained, with fewer opportunities to add small patterns.

Stage 4 (40-60%): All small evolutionary sequences are taken, so the focus switches to larger initial configurations or cross-pattern interactions. At this point, you may be at risk of getting trapped in explosive rules.
Stage 5 (60-80%): It is no longer fully possible to directly control all cells of a reaction, but small perturbations can still reveal interesting but increasingly natural outcomes. Carelessly flipping transitions will more than likely break your rule.
Stage 6 (80%-95%): Most chaotic objects are defined and your rulespace is running out. Your best option at this point is to start perturbing interactions between chaotic objects. At this point, search programs or randomly flipping transitions begin to become the only remaining methods for finding rare patterns.
Stage 7 (95%-endemic): You are close to endemic in your rule, and each newly encountered transition is precious. Some patterns may be uncompletable, requiring significant backtracking or patching. Search programs and RuleEngineers are more than just helpful here: they help you automatically enumerate thousands of rules or see which transitions you must preserve to keep functionality.

Below are the end cases of the rule. To my knowledge, no one has ever reached this in 3 states, so this is speculative. Search programs repeatedly encounter this wall in 2 states.
Local Minimum: Flipping any transition in a Local Minimum will make the rule less interesting. At this point the rule can be considered complete and canonical. You may try hopping between local minima, but that becomes increasingly hard.
The Hole: You found the CGoL of your rulespace! This is the most interesting rule within the rulespace you explored. There is no single easily accessible global minimum, but this rule has lots of interesting behavior.

Life Emerging: Naturally emerging universal constructors continually grow more complex and interesting over time with mutations, enabling interesting competitive behavior. If this exists, it could mean that no single rule is the most interesting of them all. Different rules are interesting for different reasons.

[LuveelVoom]

Below are the end cases of the rule. To my knowledge, no one has ever reached this in 3 states, so this is speculative. Search programs repeatedly encounter this wall in 2 states.
Local Minimum: Flipping any transition in a Local Minimum will make the rule less interesting. At this point the rule can be considered complete and canonical. You may try hopping between local minima, but that becomes increasingly hard.
The Hole: You found the CGoL of your rulespace! This is the most interesting rule within the rulespace you explored. There is no single easily accessible global minimum, but this rule has lots of interesting behavior.

Life Emerging: Naturally emerging universal constructors continually grow more complex and interesting over time with mutations, enabling interesting competitive behavior. If this exists, it could mean that no single rule is the most interesting of them all. Different rules are interesting for different reasons.

I don't believe there's any clear definition for "the Hole", various people find different characteristics of rules interesting.


also, it's unlikely any life emerging rule exists, at least in a range-1 low-states naturalistic rule...

[R2INT]

By "The Hole", I mean a rule that is exceptionally interesting according to the rulegolfer's own criteria, rather than an objectively most interesting rule. Different rulegolfers will naturally have different definitions of interestingness.

As for life emerging, I agree that it's highly speculative, especially in low-state range-1 rules. However, I don't think we have enough evidence to rule it out. One possibility I'm exploring is engineering rules where self-reproducing structures can emerge from random soups, with recipe mutations potentially allowing further evolution. Whether that can lead to sustained open-ended evolution is a much harder question.

[Termite]

The central portion of the mibombehemoth

mibombehemothcenter.png

what even is this