Star Wars/Snippet

Star Wars is a Generations rule devised by Mirek Wójtowicz in March 1999. In this rule, a state-0 cell will become state 1 iff it has two state-1 neighbours. A state-1 cell does not change if it has 3, 4 or 5 state-1 neighbours, otherwise it will enter state 2 next tick and then state 3 before dying. It has the rulestring 345/2/4.

Still lifes of population 5, 8, 10, 12 and above exists. The only 5-cell still life is the X-pentomino, or cross, which is a common extendable segment in larger still lifes. A group of still lifes in the shape of rectangular boxes are invincible from inside, limiting the evolution similar to a finite plane; for a m × n plane the exterior has a bounding box of (m + 4) × (n + 4). An example with m = n = 16 is shown above at lower-right corner.

Many oscillators consist of one or more lightspeed signals, with a leading state-1 cell each, that are running on the surface of the stator. These oscillators are referred to as railroads because they look like trains running on railways. The mechanism provides at least one specimen for every period p ≥ 4.

Most of the spaceships in Star Wars are at c orthogonal, thus are also referred to as photons. A c/6 diagonal spaceship has also been found. Guns (or rather, lasers) firing the smallest photon exist at all periods above 4, which can be constructed by connecting two still lifes to the aforementioned adjustable oscillator.

Usually, abundant linear growth patterns including guns, puffers, rakes, wickstretchers and wavestretchers emerge from sufficiently large soups.