ConwayLife.com

dvgrn wrote: December 10th, 2020, 4:28 pm

bubblegum wrote: December 10th, 2020, 3:39 pm Which build of LifeViewer automatically aliased rules when copying to clipboard for the express purpose of reliably erroring when pasting into Golly and can that not happen?

Ow, this is a grumpy and slightly cryptic bug report.

True.

However, despite the grumpy report it's still been fixed.

dvgrn wrote: December 10th, 2020, 4:28 pm Ow, this is a grumpy and slightly cryptic bug report. It was very tempting to answer it with

"No build of LifeViewer was done for the express purpose of reliably erroring -- that just happens naturally!"

and then wait for another post with an actual example of the problem.

Oops. I tend to be somewhat terrible at managing my emotions [s]occasionally[/s] like all the time.

bubblegum wrote: December 10th, 2020, 8:50 pmOops. I tend to be somewhat terrible at managing my emotions [s]occasionally[/s] like all the time.

Heh, me too, sometimes, or I would probably have taken a deep breath and not posted what I posted.

rowett wrote: December 10th, 2020, 6:45 pmHowever, despite the grumpy report it's still been fixed.

Thanks, that's super helpful! One slight issue: LifeHistory patterns are copied as "B3/S23History" now...

I'm confused about how to get a state to change to a different color if it's been alive for more than one generation. I tried using ALIVERAMP, but that makes it slowly change to a different color over time. I'd like any living cell which wasn't just born to immediately switch to a completely different color (from Red to Yellow, or something). How can I do this with scripts?

Also, I'm doing this for a 2-state automaton. This is what I attempted: but cells slowly go from red to green, instead of immediately.

volcanrb wrote: December 11th, 2020, 7:37 pm I'm confused about how to get a state to change to a different color if it's been alive for more than one generation. I tried using ALIVERAMP, but that makes it slowly change to a different color over time. I'd like any living cell which wasn't just born to immediately switch to a completely different color (from Red to Yellow, or something). How can I do this with scripts?

Also, I'm doing this for a 2-state automaton. This is what I attempted:

Code: Select all

#C [[ COLOR ALIVE Red ]] [[ COLOR ALIVERAMP Green ]] [[ COLOR DEAD Black ]]
x = 64, y = 64, rule = R2,C2,S2-3,B3,N@54422a:T100
!

but cells slowly go from red to green, instead of immediately.

Hm, KnightLife. A rule with the standard ruletable neighbourhoods can use a ruletable, but this one uses a custom one larger than the range-1 Moore, so no luck with that. There isn't a COLOUR command that works here. LifeViewer's state weights with Generations come close, but only state-1 cells can be born and only those can survive, so that's not what we want. lemon41625's CAViewer supports arbitrary 3-state rules using nB/Mn-1/S notation, but IIRC it's limited to range-1 Moore. I think the only program that properly supports this is bprentice's Java Square Cell, but you can't exactly customise colours in that.

A for awesome wrote: December 11th, 2020, 6:49 pm One slight issue: LifeHistory patterns are copied as "B3/S23History" now...

Fixed, thanks for reporting!

Can the viewer support pinching to zoom in/out on touchscreen devices, rather than just the zoom bar?

dvgrn wrote: December 10th, 2020, 4:28 pm I actually don't understand why that particular RLE can't be parsed by Golly, because "HighLife" is in fact a named rule that can be chosen from the Set Rule dialog. Apparently I've forgotten how named rules work in Golly.

Apparently the QuickLife/HashLife parsers only check for validation from rulestrings, and the rule in brackets at the top is set separately. The baton is then passed down to the RuleLoader algorithm which shouldn't be able to recognise it because you should've deleted your rule files for those rules by now.

How about a mode that helps debug commands? In this mode, the scripts can be run line by line and displayed on the screen real-time. Specifically, the "previous step" key runs the previous line of command, and the "next step" key runs the next line of command.

GUYTU6J wrote: December 13th, 2020, 2:22 am How about a mode that helps debug commands? In this mode, the scripts can be run line by line and displayed on the screen real-time. Specifically, the "previous step" key runs the previous line of command, and the "next step" key runs the next line of command.

Which commands are you trying to debug? There are different families of commands that will probably need different ways to debug.

rowett wrote: December 13th, 2020, 5:56 am

GUYTU6J wrote: December 13th, 2020, 2:22 am How about a mode that helps debug commands? In this mode, the scripts can be run line by line and displayed on the screen real-time. Specifically, the "previous step" key runs the previous line of command, and the "next step" key runs the next line of command.

Which commands are you trying to debug? There are different families of commands that will probably need different ways to debug.

Those related to timing and position, e.g. camera, waypoints, POI, etc.

Feature request: Button somewhere to go to the Lifewiki page for a rule used in LifeViewer (preferably the source version for easy copying).

fluffykitty wrote: December 13th, 2020, 8:14 pm Feature request: Button somewhere to go to the Lifewiki page for a rule used in LifeViewer (preferably the source version for easy copying).

Do you actually want to go to the LifeWiki Rule page or do you just want to copy the rule definition to the clipboard?

The clipboard would probably be more convenient.

Is there a way to stop lv from identifying patterns?

yujh wrote: December 14th, 2020, 7:59 am Is there a way to stop lv from identifying patterns?

Press "Esc" or "F6".

fluffykitty wrote: December 14th, 2020, 3:04 am The clipboard would probably be more convenient.

Experimental support for this has been added. Please let me know how you get on with it. Please hard refresh your browser.

Settings->Pattern->Copy Rule will now copy current rule definition to the clipboard. Note that blank lines are removed.

bprentice wrote: September 7th, 2020, 8:19 am What is the correct URL for this important list of rule definitions?

https://conwaylife.com/wiki/Special:All ... space=3794

Is the list considered part of Pattern Viewer or part of LifeWiki? If it is considered part of LifeWiki, how do you get to it from here?

https://www.conwaylife.com/wiki/Main_Page

Why doesn't Golly use the list of rule definitions?

I tried to get the rule table for the following rule in order to run it in Golly yesterday.

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=4699#p103544

I was successful, but it was challenging and confusing. It would be useful if the Pattern Viewer Help described the rule definition list and how to use it.

Brian Prentice

Finally understood what you were trying to say. The page can be reached from the sidebar's Special Pages link, then All pages under the Lists of pages section, then select Rule from the drop-down and hit Go. The URL's fine.

It would be useful, but I don't think it would be appropriate for LifeViewer's own help. Maybe like a general guidelines page? (For future reference, look up Rule:{RULENAME} and copy from the Edit or View Source tab, then paste it into Golly like a pattern. This is confusing.)

bprentice wrote: September 7th, 2020, 8:19 am Why doesn't Golly use the list of rule definitions?

Maybe it will, eventually. The Rule namespace on the LifeWiki is less than a year old, so the details are all still evolving somewhat.

Side note -- bubblegum already said this, but it's worth emphasizing it one more time:

Just like the RLE namespace, the Rule namespace is intended for storing information, not for displaying it as if it was a regular LifeWiki article. So if you want to copy out, let's say, the DoubleB3S23 rule definition, you should use this URL --

https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?titl ... ction=edit

-- or else just go to the plain DoubleB3S23 page and click the "Edit" or "View source" button (depending on whether you're logged in or not). The resulting text box contains the unformatted rule text, which is what you want to copy and paste into Golly.

So how would this functionality work for catagolue? Can the link it points to be configured manually when embedded into a specific site?

This is a really low priority feature request, but it would be nice to have.

I noticed that for hexagonal CAs, rotate partly works, but it's just the transformation of 90° rotations, and some of the rotations change the pattern neighborhoods. How hard would it be to have true 60° rotation?

pcallahan wrote: December 15th, 2020, 4:41 pm This is a really low priority feature request, but it would be nice to have.

I noticed that for hexagonal CAs, rotate partly works, but it's just the transformation of 90° rotations, and some of the rotations change the pattern neighborhoods. How hard would it be to have true 60° rotation?

A bit difficult (they're stored as rhombi IIRC) but nothing impossible if rowett takes a look at the suggestions buried by the other suggestions in this thread.

bubblegum wrote: December 15th, 2020, 6:20 pm A bit difficult (they're stored as rhombi IIRC) but nothing impossible if rowett takes a look at the suggestions buried by the other suggestions in this thread.

You can do these rotations as linear transformations while keeping the integer coordinates. I have done this with rhombuses, applying a 120° rotation using the transformation (x, y) → (y - x, -x). I never worked it out for 60° but I don't see why it wouldn't work.

Added: This works for 60° I think: (x, y) → (x-y, x)

You can verify that it cycles through (-y, x-y), (-x, -y), (y-x, -x), (y, y-x) and back to (x, y). In other words, if you start with the corner (-1,-1), you get (0, -1), (1, 0), (1, 1), (0, 1), (-1, 0) and back to (-1, -1).

As if by magic...