ConwayLife.com

hi folks,

is hexagonal life still 'in', still 'alive' .. or is it 'written off'?

.. as far as I know, there's only few gliders or ships found yet in hexagonal life version (tesselation .. ;o)] .. ), and all of them either in different rules or like ''Preston'' or ''david-star''-rule or other tries to lively up hexagonal GOL to be more .. say .. 'fertile' for playing or study or just watching .. .

I knew of only one glider unto recently .. You know it well ..

.....o.......
....oo......
.....o.......
..............
...o.o.o....

.. s2b2 .. well .. you know what I mean ..

http://www.complex-systems.com/pdf/15-3-4.pdf now speaks of two more gliders, ships, whatever .. (Figure 3. and 4.) that I was surprised to have overseen upto now ..

that makes three gliders spread on different rules .. one s2b2, (standard known one, like above), two for 'Preston' http://www.hexatron.com/hexca/.. no wait! .. FIVE gliders.. with s35b2 (Figure 3. of given link above) and s3b245 (of given link above, Fig.4.) .. anyway .. al spread on different rules ..

I have now discovered a new - I like to call it a 'medusa', cos' it does only two cells further in 24 steps ! .. and it looks like one - rather than naming it glider or ship ..

best program for hexLife is recently discovered too (after programming one myself) is HexCells 1.0.1 by Andrew Kingdom http://members.optusnet.com.au/thekingdoms/hexlife/ .. alas! without complete rule choice ..
here's my new implication with all functionality needed to study hexagonal GOL, http://zedoor.de/programmieren/HexLife_1st_upload.shtml on http://www.zedoor.de -> menu: programmieren -> submenue: HexLife1stUpload ..
alas I am programming lay and program has minor bugs (like loading patterns slowly if toggibool=true, else fast) and major bugs like prog vanishes when clicking too fast a lot for long time during runtime without using pause-button .. but if one handles it gently .. it is furious for studying hexagonal Life.

Are people even into this stuff anymore?

edit two min later: .. to me it was a little sort'a 'sensation' to be the first man in universe to witness this 'glider-medusa' .. :ox .. but maybe that glider 24steps in hexlife is known already? .. I do'nt know .. however .. HexLife remains fascinating all in all and we are all freeware all together .. ;o))


here it is:
.. last step is like first .. 2 pix resp. cells leftabove ..

Based on your description, it is not clear: which rule contains the 2c24 spaceship?

Welcome Medusa.

is hexagonal life still 'in', still 'alive' .. or is it 'written off'?

There are some people still interested, including myself! Search this forum for "hexagonal".

Note that Golly has support for hexagonal neighborhoods, although it doesn't yet display them in a hex grid. For example, the following 2 patterns can be loaded into Golly by simply copying the text and using File > Open Clipboard.

Figure 3 from the Carter Bays article you mentioned: Figure 4: Use icon view mode (tick View > Show Cell Icons, or hit the "i" key to toggle) to see hex shaped icons at scales 1:8 and 1:16. This makes it easier to enter patterns from other sources -- you just have to tilt your head by 45 degrees. Golly 2.2 uses built-in hex icons in these 2 cases: (1) If a QuickLife/HashLife rule string ends with H. (2) If a .table file specifies "neighborhood:hexagonal". Otherwise you can create a suitable rulename.icons file (see Help > File Formats).

Additional hex-based rules can be downloaded for use with Golly from the Rule Table Repository.

Like 137ben, I'd like to know the B.../S... rule for your Medusa pattern.

Seems like I found the rule for which this spaceship will work

flipper77 wrote:Seems like I found the rule for which this spaceship will work

Code: Select all

x = 4, y = 4, rule = B245/S35H
b3o$bobo$4o$bo!

I don't think so, Medusa said that it was 2c24, and oscar.py says that this is c25. But that means you found a new slow glider in a hexagonal rule

I think flipper77 is correct. The rle pattern matches the one in the gif (just tilted in the opposite direction) except for the last couple of frames in the gif which don't look correct. This is a good example of why it's much safer to use Golly to share patterns!

yeah!
.. b245s35 is its rule. (sry .. forgot)
just run that black fish, You see in the gif .. .. and run it: (prog needs java 4)

If none 'za You guys ever seen or heard of it, I guess I was the first to witness this slow 'medusa'-like ship or glider wade along my screen .. ;o)) .. yejh!

alas! .. other rule than other gliders were found in before ..

Ah, I see. What through me off was that moving one cell northeast in a Moore neighborhood is equivalent to moving two cells in a hexagonal neighborhood. That caused oscar to output the wrong speed.

Where'd you find the Java program? I'd really like to use it.

t'is in the opening post of this thread, Extrementhusiast.

I programmed it myself and only just uploaded it end of febraury.

prog has major bug: it vanishes after fast clicking a lot for a while or doing random-fill or loading from memory while running patterns without hitting pause. (however using it offline and exiting background-processes, I e.g. have avast, and putting java Memory-cache bigger 0 in ur system-settings, .. all these make proggie run better)

it needs java 4 to run (that's usually on your puter. virtual machine), I forgot to mention.

it is direct free download and comes with source, saved patterns, many pics and text-files on how grid and algo were put into reality (''make-stuff''), important hints for use .. short everything you need ..

http://zedoor.de/programmieren/HexLife_1st_upload.shtml on http://www.zedoor.de -> menu: programmieren -> submenue: HexLife1stUpload ..

.. and .. you should read hints for use on download-page .. especially that one too:
loading patterns from file takes ages if not little green toggle-i-count-and-messages-Button switched off (white textfield)

> "Are people even into this anymore?"

Yes. And you can see many hexagonal Life-like cellular automata rules, including HexLife and Carter Bay's hexagonal rules, in the exhibition at http://www.collidoscope.com/modernca/he ... rules.html

yes. I know. .. I long found and included your link on my homepage as ''further links''
(see ''www.zedoor.de''-links in previous posts).

thanks!

hi folks,

I saw on my hp somes of You downloaded my proggie ..

please tell me what You think of it proggie, if You found it self-explaining, if even at all it worked or not and if You too had that 'major bug' with prog-window vanishing after a time or a lot of clicking fast ...

.. tell me too for 'amoeba-prog!

thanks 4 ur feedback!

regards

medusa

edit: 1 sec later: did You try to save patterns too by entering names in textfield?

edit 3 sec later: my system (prog done on) is pentium III with win '98 .. that's why I ask for most of You will have better than that .. thk.

Not sure if there's a more recent thread, but I've been spending time with 2 state semi-totalistic hexagonal rules and have found a bunch of gliders. In case these aren't listed, here's 2 of the longer period ones:

One of period 36, speed 2c/36: One of period 18, 6c/18: I think B2/S2 has some promise (nice collisions), if not the others, though I don't know of a glider gun for any of them.

-John Cerkan