Pattern of the Year 2018 competition

[Hunting]

Vote for #5, also for #6, #8, #9, camelship.

[Gamedziner]

Vote for #5, also for #6, #8, #9, camelship.

Please do not vote in this thread; voting will be in another thread.

[77topaz]

Instead of having "minstrel 4" wouldn't it make more sense to just have "minstrels"?

I think the point behind calcyman's nomination is that minstrel 4 is more interesting than the other minstrels because it was manually assembled rather than by a search script.

Please do not vote in this thread; voting will be in another thread.

Indeed. And the voting won't begin until January 8th either, as I'd already pointed out to two other people in this very thread. Man, I never had this problem with the previous competitions I ran...

[Hunting]

Vote for #5, also for #6, #8, #9, camelship.

Please do not vote in this thread; voting will be in another thread.

Where?

[Hdjensofjfnen]

Vote for #5, also for #6, #8, #9, camelship.

Please do not vote in this thread; voting will be in another thread.

Where?

Not yet up. Read the thread.

[Sokwe]

Regarding #33 (new sparkers): A for awesome should instead be credited as Aidan F. Pierce.

[77topaz]

Regarding #33 (new sparkers): A for awesome should instead be credited as Aidan F. Pierce.

Thanks. Jormungant, Goldtiger997, A for Ampere, Rhombic, Entity Valkyrie, carybe, christoph.r and 2718281828 are all only known by their pseudonyms?

[Sarp]

Instead of having "minstrel 4" wouldn't it make more sense to just have "minstrels"?

I think the point behind calcyman's nomination is that minstrel 4 is more interesting than the other minstrels because it was manually assembled rather than by a search script.

The other minstrels are under represented. Maybe change Sir Robin to Sir Robin and the minstrels or maybe add minstrels 1,2,3,5 as another option?

[Rhombic]

Thanks. Jormungant, Goldtiger997, A for Ampere, Rhombic, Entity Valkyrie, carybe, christoph.r and 2718281828 are all only known by their pseudonyms?

I am Edυаrdο Gаrcía Ρаdillа, but I am not sure if people would recognise me by that name as much as by Rhombic.

[dvgrn]

Thanks. Jormungant, Goldtiger997, A for Ampere, Rhombic, Entity Valkyrie, carybe, christoph.r and 2718281828 are all only known by their pseudonyms?

I am Edυаrdο Gаrcía Ρаdillа, but I am not sure if people would recognise me by that name as much as by Rhombic.

Same with Jormungant, who is Louis-François Handfield in Golly's high-bandwidth telegraph pattern comments. "Jormungant's G-to-H" is probably a more familiar name.

I haven't been able to get hold of carybe by email yet to get permission to use a full name, so "carybe" is probably good there too.

[77topaz]

Voting is now open! The thread can be found here.

[dbell]

Entry #01 (the 0E0P metacell) isn't sufficiently described, as far as I can tell. I haven't seen the actual object in the forums or wiki, only a description of its size and period. If nobody can verify that a concrete object exists and that it works, then I think it shouldn't be able to be voted on.

Is the problem that it is too big to have the pattern available for download, or is it too large and slow to run in golly?

At least a scaled out picture of it should be provided.

If I am mistaken, and the pattern is available, then please point me to it! I would love to examine it, and then be able to vote on it. It would be worth all the stars I could give it.

BCNU,
-dbell

[Macbi]

If I am mistaken, and the pattern is available, then please point me to it! I would love to examine it, and then be able to vote on it. It would be worth all the stars I could give it.

See this post on Goucher's blog. It links to a Python script which you can use to create your own copy of the metacell.

[dbell]

Thanks for the link to the blog! The little video was nice to see. But the python script doesn't work for me (wrong library version I think). Oh well.

Anyway, with the extra information I think I can proceed with the voting. Sorry for the bother.

BCNU,
-dbell

[dvgrn]

Thanks for the link to the blog! The little video was nice to see. But the python script doesn't work for me (wrong library version I think). Oh well.

Yes, it isn't the kind of Python script that we're used to around here -- it won't Just Work in Golly, and in fact is not Golly-dependent at all. The "import lifelib" line will cause you trouble unless you have cloned or downloaded the "slmake" repository that the script resides in:

The code below uses the Python bindings of lifelib. Due to the way Python
constructs sys.path, it will use the lifelib submodule directory within
this slmake repository, even if you have another installation of lifelib
on your machine.

The script needs lifelib tools because the StreamLife algorithm is an order of magnitude faster than even HashLife can manage, for this particular assembly task. (!)

Anyway, with the extra information I think I can proceed with the voting. Sorry for the bother.

We can do a little better than the blog link, luckily. Part of the problem is that the pattern file is so large as to not be postable directly on the forums except by moderators. I did hide an actual metaglider in the Basic Questions thread, the last time this came up.

It's not really too large or slow to run in Golly. At low step sizes it chugs right along and you can get a sense of what's happening. But it has so far to go that you won't get the metaglider through a full metatick -- let alone back to its initial phase at MT=4 -- without an install of StreamLife (same order of magnitude speed improvement as above), a good computer, and a lot of patience. It took calcyman about a month to experimentally verify one metatick, in another rule where a single ON cell is a still life.

The sad state of the 0E0P LifeWiki article is a temporary problem, caused by good intentions of doing a much better job later when time allows. I'll put up these missing links and an overview image now, for a start.