Hi Ezekiel!
The main (and
only!) difference between Life and
HighLife, of course, is the B6 condition. The simplest patterns this affects are the ship, hat, and all two-parallel-islands still lifes like tables or bookends. Important differences are also that almost all small seeds (T-tetromino, honey farm precedessors, lumps of muck, queen bee, R-pentomino, B-heptomino, ∏-heptomino) stabilize faster, perhaps dying out entirely… try running them step by step in both and see if you notice where they diverge! (See the
LifeWiki or
Life Lexicon if you're not familiar with some of the preceding terms. HighLife pattern collections are also link'd from the wiki)
As for eaters, the variant of
Eater 2 with two aircraft carriers may be the most versatile — it can eat gliders on six different tracks:
Code: Select all
x = 28, y = 30, rule = B3/S23
2bo$obo$b2o2$5bo$3bobo$4b2o2$8bo$6bobo$7b2o2$17b2o$12b2obo2bo$12b2ob2o
2$12b2ob2o$10bo2bob2o$10b2o$19b2o$19bobo$19bo2$22b2o$22bobo$22bo2$25b
2o$25bobo$25bo!
(This is out of (24+18)×2 = 84 collision lanes altogether, ie. able to eat 1 out of 14 gliders. There are also 8 lanes that instead of blowing the thing up, just turn one of the ACs into a block)
Eater 5 is also somewhat versatile, able to eat from two different directions.
.