Tutorials

Welcome to the Tutorials page! If you want to learn about Life, cellular automata, patterns, software and scripting, you've come to the right place. These tutorials are designed for beginners, but you can continue into the sections to learn more and become a Professional™; we will start from something as simple as viewing a pattern.

Before we start

See also category Glossary

Before starting these tutorials, you may want to read around on the wiki. These tutorials may at times expect you to know basic rules and patterns. Here are some articles you may want to check out before starting:

• Life
• Glossary of basic terms
• Cellular automata
• Pattern
• Soup
• Still life
• Spaceship
• Oscillator

Tutorials

See also category Tutorials

Here are some of the tutorials currently available; see category "Tutorials" for more.

• Rules — start here if you're not yet familiar with cellular automata and want to get a bit of background before delving into patterns and software.
  • Finding good rules
  • Creating custom rules
• Golly
  • More Golly
  • Scripts
• LifeViewer JavaScript plug-in
• Software
  • Your first Python script
  • Compiling C Code (In General)
  • Coding Life simulators (series of blog posts by Eric Lippert)
  • Specific Programs:
    • Contributing to the 5S Project
    • Contributing to Catagolue
    • Catagolue stdin symmetry
    • gfind
    • ikpx2
    • LLS (Logic Life Search)
    • LSSS
    • LLSSS
    • rlifesrc
    • Seeds of Destruction Game
    • slmake/slsparse
• Other search methods
  • Glider syntheses
  • Seed building
  • Finding conduits
  • Catalyses
  • General technology
  • Finding oscillators