ConwayLife.com

Posted: **March 28th, 2011, 1:22 pm**

Ever since I discovered MCell I have enjoyed messing around with CA rules and seeing what
patterns they produced. In fact I have spent over 100 hours in MCell coming up with
different rules since it is so easy to create them in that program. I came to this community
hoping to share these rules and my experiences creating them but I ran into the following
problems:

1. Overall the community is just too small. Many of my posts here are almost completely
ignored only getting a few replies.

2. There is almost no discussion of MCell. This really surprised me when I first came here
since MCell is such an easy program to use and is what got me interested in CA in the first
place.

3. There is too much discussion of Golly. Golly is a horrible program lacking many basic
features and is hard to use. The rule tables are horrible compared to all the rule creating
abilities in MCell. Golly is also what put me off learning about CA for so long.

4. Everyone cares too much about patterns. Patterns are alright but they don't really do
much.

5. People don't care enough about different CA rules. Even though there is a sub forum about
non life CA rules the topics there for the most part only cover the most basic CA rules.
None of the topics deal with the more advanced rules that can be created in MCell. When you
actually enter the topics all people do is post patterns they found in the rule. There is no
discussion about modifying the rule and seeing what happens to certain patterns.

Sorry about this but I just had to get this off my chest. It is just so annoying to spend so
much time in MCell and then not have anyone to talk to about it with.

Posted: **March 28th, 2011, 2:02 pm**

1. The community is small. To gather more interest, someone could write up some of the neat things about CA, and post to some of the social media sites. Reddit's math subreddit for example. I'm sure if more people knew about CA the community would grow. There may also be other enthusiasts who are not on the forums yet.
It is disheartening when you find something particularly interesting to you, and you want to tell everyone, "hey look at this neat thing I found" but nobody else is quite as excited about it. I found an awesome spaceship I posted in the "accidental discoveries in other rules" thread, moves 152 spaces every 1334 generations and looks like a failed replicator, but I didn't get any comments about it. Bummer.

2. I still use mcell. Been using it for years. It's what got me started too, and it's what i'm most familiar with.

3. I only really use golly for viewing the large engineered patterns. I think a lot of people use it for that and the scripting.

4. I care about patterns because they answer: "can this rule support this kind of pattern?" I would love to have enough time to classify lifelike CA based on which kinds of patterns they can support. Even seemingly simple questions can be tricky. For example, which rules support still lifes? Try to find a still life in B24/S24. The smallest one I've found is large, and it took a few attempts to set up WLS to not choke to death on the search.

5. I hear you, to some extent. Life is king around here; it's the most studied rule and as such, it's tricky to do new things in it. Lifelike CA are probably next most popular, though I wish even these had more interest. There's no love for the B2 rules. I don't stray far beyond that, because the main search programs I use (WLS, gfind, afind) only search in Lifelike CA.
If you want people to get excited about new CA rules you find, try to answer the question, "what does this CA do that others can't?" Then, advertise that.

Posted: **March 28th, 2011, 3:00 pm**

Before you complain, have a look at comp.theory.cell-automata:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.the ... ata/topics

Nathaniel's site (conwaylife.com) is a blessing!

2. There is almost no discussion of MCell.

There's also very little discussion of Life32.

3. There is too much discussion of Golly. Golly is a horrible program lacking many basic features and is hard to use.

People prefer different programs for different reasons. I personally prefer scripted editing to manual bit-twiddling, HashLife to primitive algorithms, and unlimited size to a 2500*100000 bounding box. (!)

The rule tables are horrible compared to all the rule creating abilities in MCell.

I challenge you to implement one of my favourite rules, Nobili32, in MCell. Writing a rule table is simpler and more intuitive than a DLL.

4. Everyone cares too much about patterns. Patterns are alright but they don't really do much.

A CA rule without patterns does ... nothing. And I don't see how 'don't really do much' is applicable, when we have such treasures as Brice Due's metacells, Jason Summers' Fermat Prime Calculator, and Paul Rendell's Turing machine.

5. People don't care enough about different CA rules.

I agree with you on that. There is a dearth of interest about von Neumann-esque rules.

Posted: **March 28th, 2011, 6:35 pm**

1. Yes, but there's not much we can do about it except GET MORE PEOPLE TO JOIN!

2/3: I see what you mean: Golly was initially intended to be optimized for life. Making life-like rules is also easy...however, making large rule tables with patterns other than repetition in many cases requires listing every possible combination of states, which takes way to long. I frequently test a rule in Mathematica before writing a rule table, as I find it a lot easier to design interesting rules (but golly's hash-life is always nice). In short, different programs are useful for different things.

4. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm assuming what you mean by this is that you like searching for interesting rules, rather than spending years finding more and more complex patterns in a single rule. As said above, if that's what ya like doing, then golly isn't the best program to use.

5.I agree. Life dominates, even though it isn't any better than other class 4 rules. I worked very hard on my switch1329 rule, which so far has received...0 comments

There's also been very little discussion of your rules...or of almost ANY rule posted in the "other CA" board

Posted: **March 28th, 2011, 8:17 pm**

gbagcn wrote:Golly is a horrible program lacking many basic features and is hard to use.

I'm always happy to get feedback that might help me improve Golly. What are the missing basic features, and which parts of Golly are hard to use?

Posted: **March 28th, 2011, 8:36 pm**

137ben wrote:I frequently test a rule in Mathematica before writing a rule table, as I find it a lot easier to design interesting rules

If you're willing to write Mathematica code to create new CA rules then you should look at the various RuleTreeGen.* programs supplied with Golly in Rules/TreeGenerators. There are C++, Java, Perl and Python examples. Choose whichever language you prefer, replace the transition function with your own code, then compile and run to create output that can be saved in a suitable foo.tree file for Golly to use. For many people, especially those with programming skills, this approach is a lot easier than creating a .table file (which is a bit like writing assembly code).

EDIT: I should also mention that Rules/TableGenerators has a make-ruletable.cpp program that uses a similar approach for creating .table files. See the comments inside that file.

Posted: **March 29th, 2011, 9:51 am**

I completely disagree with the first post. MCell is a mess with a lot of unnecessary features (Why on earth would I want to draw circles?) and, while some subsets of rules are interesting (i.e. Weighted Life), they can be ported to Golly easily (except for Larger Than Life). The ruletable format is easy to use, especially since Golly 2.2 added direct support for permutation and hexagonal neighbourhoods.

I don't understand what's your point, either. MCell stopped development nine years ago, and it seems like you're suggesting that there's some sort of conspiracy or unfair bias against an outdated program which can't compare on speed or capabilities with Golly. I just don't want to wait until my WineBottled version of MCell appears on screen, fumble around trying to find where to put the arbitrary, incomprehensible string of numbers and draw something (for god's sake NOT A CIRCLE) to see the new slight variation on Star Wars someone found by smashing his keyboard randomly. Sorry if I'm rough, but that's how I feel about unnecessary flames.

I agree with you that CA rules are sometimes ignored (There are rules that I like more than CGoL, though it's impressive the massive dedication people show to that rule) but your complain seems kind of childish.

In general, I'm more annoyed by the lack of interest on CA these days than by the CA community.

Posted: **March 29th, 2011, 10:00 am**

velcrorex wrote:I found an awesome spaceship I posted in the "accidental discoveries in other rules" thread, moves 152 spaces every 1334 generations and looks like a failed replicator, but I didn't get any comments about it. Bummer.

That sounds interesting! Link?

Also, I completely agree with you on the whole Reddit thing. I thought about creating a subreddit, but I'm not popular on Reddit, and I didn't want to divide the community. But I'm sure we can get a lot of attention, for example, if Wade answers himself to questions about Gemini, or Calcyman about the Phi Calculator. We know it's a hard feat, but you have to explain to everyone else why is it so hard and why is it such a great achievement. It could even be crossposted to /r/science

Posted: **March 29th, 2011, 11:08 am**

ebcube: Here's the link, http://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic. ... =376#p2183

I think some well written expository articles (with pictures) would be well received on r/math or science. You could link to the forums here at the end of the articles. Another option would be a "how to" article about what programs to download to start playing with CA or searching for patterns. I've also pondered writing a lifelike-CA blog.

One drawback to expanding the community is bringing novices up to speed. There may be lots of new threads with questions like, "How do I draw a line in golly," which isn't so terrible, but require time and patience. Topics like "How do I use CGoL to make an AI" or "I want to design a CA to emulate the solar system" just show inexperience with the scope of CA.

Posted: **March 29th, 2011, 1:19 pm**

velcrorex wrote:ebcube: Here's the link, http://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic. ... =376#p2183

That rule really favors 152c/1334 spaceships -- there are any number of fairly compact seeds that produce the ship, e.g.,

Code: Select all

#MCell 4.20
#GAME Rules table
#RULE 1,0,1,0,0,4,2,1,1,3,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,4,1,2,3,0,0,0,0,
#RULE 0,4,4,3,3,2,0,4,0,0,0,0,0,2,4,4,2
#CCOLORS 5
#L 8.BAB$8.AAB$8.BB6$BAB$AAB$BB6$9.BB$8.BAA$8.BAB

The rule seems to be heavily biased toward a slow boiling-away into vacuum, so most of the failed-replicator junk thrown off by one of these seeds tends to disappear without affecting the advancing front of the pattern. I haven't seen many stationary oscillators in this rule, .ADD$BA.AD$BA.AD$.ADD being one exception.

Doubling up the above seed can produce very high-period puffers, and probably rakes for 152c/1334 spaceships as well. I haven't done any experimenting with the enormous number of possible distances, phases, and offsets, but the following random sample looks like it might settle down into a high-period orbit eventually -- it sends out something like 20 orthogonal 152c/1334 spaceships (and no other types) in the first 32,000 ticks:

Code: Select all

#MCell 4.20
#GAME Rules table
#RULE 1,0,1,0,0,4,2,1,1,3,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,4,1,2,3,0,0,0,0,
#RULE 0,4,4,3,3,2,0,4,0,0,0,0,0,2,4,4,2
#BOARD 10000x2500
#WRAP 0
#CCOLORS 5
#L 8.BAB$8.AAB$8.BB6$BAB$AAB$BB6$9.BB$8.BAA$8.BAB30$8.BAB$8.BAA$9.BB6$BB$
#L AAB$BAB6$8.BB$8.AAB$8.BAB

Is there any particular rhyme or reason to that rule table, or was it chosen more or less randomly -- maybe an accumulation of incremental changes to the table in a generally interesting neighborhood of the rule space?

Clearly there's no danger of running out of rules to explore. I've generally limited my attention to plain old B3/S23, fairly deliberately, just because it seems so difficult to get other people interested in any one particular alternate rule -- there are so many possibilities, especially in an extended ruleset like MCell's Rule Table rules, that everyone on Earth could have trillions of rules all to themselves without anyone overlapping with anyone else. At least with Conway's Life one can find _somebody_ else who is interested in the same rule, even if that rule is popular mostly due to a historical accident...!

Posted: **March 29th, 2011, 1:36 pm**

Thanks for taking a look, I didn't realize the potential for things besides the ship itself.
I started with a more or less random rule table and made incremental changes. I was looking for a rule that didn't explode, had no common still lifes or oscillators, but had common unusual spaceships. Of all such rule table searches I've done, this rule, and ship, is my favorite.

Posted: **March 29th, 2011, 2:56 pm**

velcrorex wrote:ebcube: Here's the link, http://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic. ... =376#p2183

I think some well written expository articles (with pictures) would be well received on r/math or science. You could link to the forums here at the end of the articles. Another option would be a "how to" article about what programs to download to start playing with CA or searching for patterns. I've also pondered writing a lifelike-CA blog.

One drawback to expanding the community is bringing novices up to speed. There may be lots of new threads with questions like, "How do I draw a line in golly," which isn't so terrible, but require time and patience. Topics like "How do I use CGoL to make an AI" or "I want to design a CA to emulate the solar system" just show inexperience with the scope of CA.

Some forums handle this by creating a subforum for presentations. As they introduce themselves, they'll ask noobish questions there. I wish we get to the point where we need that

I'm going to take a look at that CA now...

Posted: **March 29th, 2011, 6:11 pm**

velcrorex wrote:Of all such rule table searches I've done, this rule, and ship, is my favorite.

It certainly produces some beautiful patterns -- here are two impressively sparky symmetrical spaceships, one three times as fast as the other one:

Code: Select all

#D Open this pattern in MCell -- Golly will return an error
#MCell 4.20
#GAME Rules table
#RULE 1,0,1,0,0,4,2,1,1,3,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,4,1,2,3,0,0,0,0,
#RULE 0,4,4,3,3,2,0,4,0,0,0,0,0,2,4,4,2
#BOARD 250x500
#WRAP 1
#CCOLORS 5
#L 13.DD$.ADA8.BCAD$..CAB6.DA.BD21.BB$BA3C6.DB.BB20.D3A$.DCCAD5.BA.B.D18.
#L D3.AB$BABAA7.BA3CB3D3.DD8.BA.C.AB$3.DD8.DBB.AC.AD..BCB7.BA3.D$8.DBDADA
#L .CDB3.B.AA.CA7.3AD$8.ACADCBAA..DD.C.DB.CB..D5.BB$8.BAABBDB3.DD.A.DABAA
#L .DD$9.ACAB4.DC3.BDDBBDBABD13.BB$9.BCDA4.DA..AD4.ABCB13.D3A$9.BAC6.4D4.
#L D.D.A12.D3.AB$9.DCABD13.A3B11.BA.C.AB$10.AA.D12.DDB13.BA3.D$11.AA13.A.
#L 3D12.3AD$25.ADD..A13.BB$24.DAA..BAA$24.D4.AACA$30.AC$31.AA3$31.AA$30.A
#L C$24.D4.AACA$24.DAA..BAA$25.ADD..A13.BB$11.AA13.A.3D12.3AD$10.AA.D12.
#L DDB13.BA3.D$9.DCABD13.A3B11.BA.C.AB$9.BAC6.4D4.D.D.A12.D3.AB$9.BCDA4.D
#L A..AD4.ABCB13.D3A$9.ACAB4.DC3.BDDBBDBABD13.BB$8.BAABBDB3.DD.A.DABAA.DD
#L $8.ACADCBAA..DD.C.DB.CB..D5.BB$8.DBDADA.CDB3.B.AA.CA7.3AD$3.DD8.DBB.AC
#L .AD..BCB7.BA3.D$BABAA7.BA3CB3D3.DD8.BA.C.AB$.DCCAD5.BA.B.D18.D3.AB$BA
#L 3C6.DB.BB20.D3A$..CAB6.DA.BD21.BB$.ADA8.BCAD$13.DD48$25.BBA$24.AACC$
#L 23.BA.BB$23.BCBD$23.ACB$$16.DD13.BCA$18.B11.DBCB$15.DABB3.BAB4.BB.AB$
#L 13.D.A.DCB..AACB3.CCAA$13.D.BD.BBADDCAA3.ABB$14.BBCB..A..DAB$16.BB..BB
#L .D$17.AA3BAA$17.D.BB..BB$15.BAD..A..BCBB$9.BBA3.AACDDABB.DB.D13.BBA$8.
#L AACC3.BCAA..BCD.A.D12.AACC$7.BA.BB4.BAB3.BBAD13.BA.BB$7.BCBD11.B16.BCB
#L D$7.ACB13.DD14.ACB$$15.BCA29.BCA$14.DBCB28.DBCB$13.BB.AB16.AD9.BB.AB$
#L 13.CCAA15.BA.CD8.CCAA$13.ABB16.AC.CB8.ABB$33.DAB3$39.BCA$38.DBCB$37.BB
#L .AB$37.CCAA$37.ABB$37.ABB$37.CCAA$37.BB.AB$38.DBCB$39.BCA3$33.DAB$13.A
#L BB16.AC.CB8.ABB$13.CCAA15.BA.CD8.CCAA$13.BB.AB16.AD9.BB.AB$14.DBCB28.D
#L BCB$15.BCA29.BCA$$7.ACB13.DD14.ACB$7.BCBD11.B16.BCBD$7.BA.BB4.BAB3.BBA
#L D13.BA.BB$8.AACC3.BCAA..BCD.A.D12.AACC$9.BBA3.AACDDABB.DB.D13.BBA$15.B
#L AD..A..BCBB$17.D.BB..BB$17.AA3BAA$16.BB..BB.D$14.BBCB..A..DAB$13.D.BD.
#L BBADDCAA3.ABB$13.D.A.DCB..AACB3.CCAA$15.DABB3.BAB4.BB.AB$18.B11.DBCB$
#L 16.DD13.BCA$$23.ACB$23.BCBD$23.BA.BB$24.AACC$25.BBA

In case you'd care to try this rule with Golly's HashLife algorithm, here's an equivalent rule table -- save this text file to Golly's Rules folder as "Velcro.table":

Code: Select all

# Velcro.table
 
n_states: 5
neighborhood:Moore
symmetries:permute

var a={0,2,4}
var b={0,2,4}
var c={0,2,4}
var d={0,2,4}
var e={0,2,4}
var f={0,2,4}
var g={0,2,4}
var h={0,2,4}
var i={1,3}
var j={1,3}
var k={1,3}
var l={1,3}
var m={1,3}
var n={1,3}
var q={0,1,2,3,4}
var r={0,1,2,3,4}
var s={0,1,2,3,4}
var t={0,1,2,3,4}
var u={0,1,2,3,4}
var v={0,1,2,3,4}
var w={0,1,2,3,4}
var x={0,1,2,3,4}
var y={0,1,2,3,4}

# state 0 transition rules:
0,i,j,a,b,c,d,e,f,4
0,i,j,k,a,b,c,d,e,2
0,i,j,k,l,a,b,c,d,1
0,i,j,k,l,m,a,b,c,1
0,i,j,k,l,m,n,a,b,3

# state 1 transition rules:
1,i,j,a,b,c,d,e,f,1
1,i,j,k,a,b,c,d,e,1
1,i,j,k,l,a,b,c,d,3

# state 2 transition rules:
2,i,a,b,c,d,e,f,g,4
2,i,j,a,b,c,d,e,f,1
2,i,j,k,a,b,c,d,e,2
2,i,j,k,l,a,b,c,d,3

# state 3 transition rules:
3,a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,4
3,i,a,b,c,d,e,f,g,4
3,i,j,a,b,c,d,e,f,3
3,i,j,k,a,b,c,d,e,3
3,i,j,k,l,a,b,c,d,2
3,i,j,k,l,m,a,b,c,0
3,i,j,k,l,m,n,a,b,4

# state 4 transition rules:
4,i,j,a,b,c,d,e,f,2
4,i,j,k,a,b,c,d,e,4
4,i,j,k,l,a,b,c,d,4
4,i,j,k,l,m,a,b,c,2

# Death is the catchall rule
q,r,s,t,u,v,w,x,y,0

I'll leave the .colors file as an exercise for the reader. This won't quite let you open the original MCell file directly in Golly -- you have to change the #RULE lines to

#RULE Velcro

and then Golly should recognize the pattern format, including the #BOARD and #WRAP settings.

This has been a good translation exercise -- now that we have the "permute" symmetry option, it obviously wouldn't be too difficult to write a script to build a Golly .table file for any "#GAME Rules table" MCell file, or even to generate the .table file automatically if the file is opened directly in Golly. Might need a pop-up window asking for an official name for the new table, though, so maybe a script would be better.

Here's a sample pattern that Golly can handle much better than MCell can -- a seed for what seems to be a successful replicator, though the timing is a bit difficult to decipher. The actual replicator might be generation 92 of this pattern, with a dozen two-color heart-blobs instead of just four. But I think there are quite a number of phases that could equally well be used as the reference phase:

EDIT by Andrew: Dave, I've moved the initial comment after the #Mcell line, otherwise Golly won't recognize it as an MCell file.

Code: Select all

#MCell 4.20
#D Open this pattern in Golly -- MCell will not change the current rule
#GAME Rules table
#RULE Velcro
#CCOLORS 5
#L BAB$AAB$BB6$9.BB$8.BAA$8.BAB11$8.BAB$8.BAA$9.BB6$BB$AAB$BAB

Keep the cheer,

DaveG

Posted: **March 29th, 2011, 11:55 pm**

Thanks for putting that rule in golly format, I got it to run and played with it a bit. The first random pattern you posted, I ran twice as long, and it seems to also produce a backwards rake. It did not stabilize yet. Playing around with other patterns I also saw a side rake.
The replicator is strange and different from others I've seen: the parts that move left seem to move at a different speed than the parts that move right. Or that may be a visual illusion.
The ships and patterns in this rule are rather large. It's difficult to recognize ships and understand what the patterns are doing. Ultimately, the rule is pretty and demonstrates that ships, rakes, and replicators are possible on larger scales.
Also, I'm sorry for detouring this discussion off track, though it's interesting.

Posted: **March 30th, 2011, 1:03 am**

Actually, it's possible to create pattern files readable by both MCell and Golly. Just insert a suitable "#GOLLY Foo" line (which is ignored by MCell) before the first #RULE line, as in the following 2 examples. If the string after #GOLLY is a known rule then Golly should have no problems loading the pattern.

Code: Select all

#MCell 4.20
#GAME Rules table
#GOLLY Velcro
#RULE 1,0,1,0,0,4,2,1,1,3,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,4,1,2,3,0,0,0,0,
#RULE 0,4,4,3,3,2,0,4,0,0,0,0,0,2,4,4,2
#BOARD 250x500
#WRAP 1
#CCOLORS 5
#L 13.DD$.ADA8.BCAD$..CAB6.DA.BD21.BB$BA3C6.DB.BB20.D3A$.DCCAD5.BA.B.D18.
#L D3.AB$BABAA7.BA3CB3D3.DD8.BA.C.AB$3.DD8.DBB.AC.AD..BCB7.BA3.D$8.DBDADA
#L .CDB3.B.AA.CA7.3AD$8.ACADCBAA..DD.C.DB.CB..D5.BB$8.BAABBDB3.DD.A.DABAA
#L .DD$9.ACAB4.DC3.BDDBBDBABD13.BB$9.BCDA4.DA..AD4.ABCB13.D3A$9.BAC6.4D4.
#L D.D.A12.D3.AB$9.DCABD13.A3B11.BA.C.AB$10.AA.D12.DDB13.BA3.D$11.AA13.A.
#L 3D12.3AD$25.ADD..A13.BB$24.DAA..BAA$24.D4.AACA$30.AC$31.AA3$31.AA$30.A
#L C$24.D4.AACA$24.DAA..BAA$25.ADD..A13.BB$11.AA13.A.3D12.3AD$10.AA.D12.
#L DDB13.BA3.D$9.DCABD13.A3B11.BA.C.AB$9.BAC6.4D4.D.D.A12.D3.AB$9.BCDA4.D
#L A..AD4.ABCB13.D3A$9.ACAB4.DC3.BDDBBDBABD13.BB$8.BAABBDB3.DD.A.DABAA.DD
#L $8.ACADCBAA..DD.C.DB.CB..D5.BB$8.DBDADA.CDB3.B.AA.CA7.3AD$3.DD8.DBB.AC
#L .AD..BCB7.BA3.D$BABAA7.BA3CB3D3.DD8.BA.C.AB$.DCCAD5.BA.B.D18.D3.AB$BA
#L 3C6.DB.BB20.D3A$..CAB6.DA.BD21.BB$.ADA8.BCAD$13.DD48$25.BBA$24.AACC$
#L 23.BA.BB$23.BCBD$23.ACB$$16.DD13.BCA$18.B11.DBCB$15.DABB3.BAB4.BB.AB$
#L 13.D.A.DCB..AACB3.CCAA$13.D.BD.BBADDCAA3.ABB$14.BBCB..A..DAB$16.BB..BB
#L .D$17.AA3BAA$17.D.BB..BB$15.BAD..A..BCBB$9.BBA3.AACDDABB.DB.D13.BBA$8.
#L AACC3.BCAA..BCD.A.D12.AACC$7.BA.BB4.BAB3.BBAD13.BA.BB$7.BCBD11.B16.BCB
#L D$7.ACB13.DD14.ACB$$15.BCA29.BCA$14.DBCB28.DBCB$13.BB.AB16.AD9.BB.AB$
#L 13.CCAA15.BA.CD8.CCAA$13.ABB16.AC.CB8.ABB$33.DAB3$39.BCA$38.DBCB$37.BB
#L .AB$37.CCAA$37.ABB$37.ABB$37.CCAA$37.BB.AB$38.DBCB$39.BCA3$33.DAB$13.A
#L BB16.AC.CB8.ABB$13.CCAA15.BA.CD8.CCAA$13.BB.AB16.AD9.BB.AB$14.DBCB28.D
#L BCB$15.BCA29.BCA$$7.ACB13.DD14.ACB$7.BCBD11.B16.BCBD$7.BA.BB4.BAB3.BBA
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#L AD..A..BCBB$17.D.BB..BB$17.AA3BAA$16.BB..BB.D$14.BBCB..A..DAB$13.D.BD.
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#L 16.DD13.BCA$$23.ACB$23.BCBD$23.BA.BB$24.AACC$25.BBA

Code: Select all

#MCell 4.20
#GAME Rules table
#GOLLY Velcro
#RULE 1,0,1,0,0,4,2,1,1,3,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,4,1,2,3,0,0,0,0,
#RULE 0,4,4,3,3,2,0,4,0,0,0,0,0,2,4,4,2
#CCOLORS 5
#L BAB$AAB$BB6$9.BB$8.BAA$8.BAB11$8.BAB$8.BAA$9.BB6$BB$AAB$BAB

Posted: **April 3rd, 2011, 3:34 pm**

ebcube wrote:I completely disagree with the first post. MCell is a mess with a lot of unnecessary features (Why on earth would I want to draw circles?) and, while some subsets of rules are interesting (i.e. Weighted Life), they can be ported to Golly easily (except for Larger Than Life). The ruletable format is easy to use, especially since Golly 2.2 added direct support for permutation and hexagonal neighbourhoods.

I don't understand what's your point, either. MCell stopped development nine years ago, and it seems like you're suggesting that there's some sort of conspiracy or unfair bias against an outdated program which can't compare on speed or capabilities with Golly. I just don't want to wait until my WineBottled version of MCell appears on screen, fumble around trying to find where to put the arbitrary, incomprehensible string of numbers and draw something (for god's sake NOT A CIRCLE) to see the new slight variation on Star Wars someone found by smashing his keyboard randomly. Sorry if I'm rough, but that's how I feel about unnecessary flames.

I agree with you that CA rules are sometimes ignored (There are rules that I like more than CGoL, though it's impressive the massive dedication people show to that rule) but your complain seems kind of childish.

In general, I'm more annoyed by the lack of interest on CA these days than by the CA community.

I wouldn't say porting rules from MCell to Golly is easy. Even though it probably can be done I have a hard time trying to write rule tables in Golly since there is no GUI. I would try making a topic asking for help porting some of my rules to Golly but since there is so little interest in MCell it probably wouldn't get any responses. Also I have trouble even motivating myself to learn Golly in the first place since MCell is so much easier to use. Pretty much the only reason I have for learning it is to be able to have something to talk about with the CA community. Even though MCell is old it still has many more features than Golly such as being able to change the size of the grid and a GUI for rule creation.

If you actually bothered to look at the rules that I made you would see that they were more than just a slight variation of star wars and they were not created randomly. When searching for interesting variations I only bothered to save the ones that were significantly different from the ones that I had found before. Also unlike most CA rules these rules have an interesting property of creating lots of varied patterns when started from a simple initial state. This variety is much higher than the variety in brians brain and star wars.

Posted: **April 3rd, 2011, 6:23 pm**

First of all, what is this "GUI" you talk of? And in Golly 2.2, it is possible to change whether or not the grid has a finite boundary, and what geometry it has (torus, Klein bottle, etc.) if it does. You can even make one axis infinite and one not.

Posted: **April 3rd, 2011, 7:25 pm**

gbagcn wrote:Also I have trouble even motivating myself to learn Golly in the first place since MCell is so much easier to use.

You keep saying that but apart from MCell's GUI for rule creation you don't give any concrete examples. There's not a lot of incentive to add such a GUI to Golly -- it would have to be quite complex to provide the rich flexibility currently available by writing table/tree code.

gbagcn wrote:Even though MCell is old it still has many more features than Golly such as being able to change the size of the grid ...

Please list some of those "many" features. It sounds like you haven't actually used Golly for some time -- version 2.2 has support for bounded grids of varying sizes and topologies (far more than MCell). See Help > Bounded Grids.

MCell is a fine program, but it's an evolutionary dead end given that Mirek seems to have lost interest in it. Golly is open source, cross-platform and (hopefully) still improving. Take some time to make a few detailed suggestions and it might even improve to the point where you're willing to give it another go!

Posted: **April 4th, 2011, 4:12 am**

Andrew wrote:
gbagcn wrote:Even though MCell is old it still has many more features than Golly such as being able to change the size of the grid ...
Please list some of those "many" features. It sounds like you haven't actually used Golly for some time -- version 2.2 has support for bounded grids of varying sizes and topologies (far more than MCell). See Help > Bounded Grids.

Or if "change the size of the grid" means MCell's Settings > Board > Show Grid / Bold line every {N} cells, Golly's equivalent settings are in File > Preferences > View.

I do still have a certain nostalgic fondness for MCell, in spite of its odd tendency to lock up when I use the space bar too much, and to corrupt my pattern files when I accidentally don't give it enough time to finish a paste operation... It was my editor of choice for many years, until patterns too big for it to handle became more common. There's certainly a somewhat higher learning curve for Golly than for MCell, especially for the large fraction of users that aren't comfortable with Python or Perl programming, or even editing external text files in general. A lot of Golly's most interesting features show up when you run a script or edit a .table file.

In many cases it's hard to see what we can do to simplify the user interface without losing functionality. A GUI that duplicates MCell's Rule Table setup tab is certainly possible, for example, but the set of accessible rules would be limited to a tiny arbitrary fraction of the space allowed by Golly rule tables.

The translation of velcrorex's rule into a .table file, earlier in this thread, demonstrates an algorithm that will allow Golly to handle any MCell Rule Table rule file. I'm still working out some of the details, such as how to come up with reliably unique names for .table files, but I think eventually Golly will be able to read "#GAME Rules table" .mcl files natively.

I'll probably write a Python conversion script first to see if that turns up any unexpected problems. The main difficulty was always the "all odd states are firing" setting, where only some states are included in the neighbor count. That's taken care of by defining two classes of states at the top of the .table file (e.g., "var a={0,2,4}" and "var i={1,3}"). This is a bit confusing when you have to do it manually, but I think it won't cause too many headaches if the .table files are generated automatically.

The only remaining problem is supporting the "Include the center cell" parameter... but I think that's just a trivial adjustment to the "firing" rows in the state table. This probably explains why I've never actually seen a rule with that parameter turned on -- it doesn't really extend the range of possible behavior.

Posted: **April 4th, 2011, 6:06 am**

dvgrn wrote:In many cases it's hard to see what we can do to simplify the user interface without losing functionality. A GUI that duplicates MCell's Rule Table setup tab is certainly possible, for example, but the set of accessible rules would be limited to a tiny arbitrary fraction of the space allowed by Golly rule tables.

Gianluca Tempesti had a GUI for editing complex CA rules, described in appendix A of his PhD thesis:
http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~gt512/Publ ... mpesti.pdf (10MB)
I've put a screenshot here:

The source code is available if anyone is interested. I haven't tried running it.

A key part of its functionality is to allow the user to add transitions and detect whether those transitions are in conflict with any others already listed. And you can step through a pattern to add rules as needed to direct the behavior as desired.

It would take some serious engineering to add this to Golly but it might be nice. (I'm not sure it addresses gbagcn's issue, since it would still be difficult to mess around with simple rules, as in MCell. We would need different GUIs for those.)

Posted: **October 15th, 2011, 12:29 am**

What really gets to me is that there are so many people who think of this too much as a video game, i.e. they just use it to create ``battleships'' made from rakes and puffers that shoot each other. I think this is a waste of time and processing power and not what JHC had in mind at all. And then they go post what they did with a space rake and a lightspeed telegraph -- which, might I add, they have no idea how hard it was to make -- on a forum thread that at least in my opinion probably does NOT need it.

Another thing that annoys me is how people create new threads even for the most minor discoveries, even ones that can easily be put in another thread. I saw that some person posted an accidental discovery right above the ``Thread 4 your accidental discoveries'' thread because he somehow thought that his discovery deserves a thread of its own.

Posted: **October 15th, 2011, 1:44 am**

Platypus5, if you see the above message, I just want to say that, in contrast, I greatly enjoyed viewing your battleships, I thought they showed artistry, and I hope you post more.

Posted: **October 15th, 2011, 4:52 am**

@beebop

On these forums, we encourage people to explore Conway's Game of Life in whatever way they see fit. We're all here to have fun (this is a topic of recreational mathematics after all).

The new threads that you mention may be from newer users who are not familiar with the all of the existing threads. There aren't many of these threads anyway, as our community is quite small. Also, we do not have many active threads as it is, and a people may feel that their posts do not reasonably fit in another thread. I sincerely doubt that anyone here makes threads for the arrogant reasons you mention. So far, I have not felt the need to delete any threads on these forums.

When Conway created Life, I doubt he had any idea that it would become as popular as it did. I think that he is happy that people can find enjoyment from the game in so many ways. Also, I know many people who would tell you that searching for Game of Life patterns is a waste of time and processing power.

I toned down your inflammatory language slightly. We do not want to discourage anyone from enjoying Life! To be a productive community we need tolerance, kindness, and friendship (because friendship is magic).

@Platypus5
I am honoured that you liked my new rake discoveries. I too found your battleships fun to watch. Also, your discussion of c/4 rakes reminded me of a project that I had almost completely forgotten about, which led to the discovery of those new rakes. I really appreciate it!

Posted: **October 15th, 2011, 8:42 am**

Sokwe wrote:tolerance, kindness, and friendship (because friendship is magic)

The last place I expected to read that.

Posted: **October 15th, 2011, 12:03 pm**

Sokwe wrote:we encourage people to explore Conway's Game of Life in whatever way they see fit

OK. I did not know of some of the motives of this board and now see the error of my ways

. I suppose that it's OK as long as the people doing it don't think that what they are doing is the only application of GoL.

My sincerest apologies to Platypus5.

ConwayLife.com

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