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This page contains drafts for lessons in Conway's Story Mode.
Lesson 1: What Is CGoL?
Text
- Conway's Game of Life is a "zero-player game," devised by mathematician John Conway in 1969.
- CGoL, as we'll call it, operated on an infinite square grid. Each square in this grid is called a cell.
- Each cell can have two states: alive and dead. We'll mark alive cells in light colors, and dead cells in dark colors.
- In CGoL, you set up some configuration of alive and dead cells (called a pattern), at the start.
- After that, each cell changes according to its own state, as well as the states of its neighbors.
- A cell has 8 neighbors, arranged in a ring. Here, the orange cells are neighbors of the white cell:
- (click above to open LifeViewer)
- You'll learn more about the rules that the cells follow to change state in the next lesson, Lesson 2.
- For now, though, you'll just be given a question to answer. Don't worry, it's not that hard.
Question
Question: Which sample configuration has more alive cells?
A: Oops! This only has 4 alive cells, which is smaller than the 10 alive cells that B has. (gives 1 star)
B: Great job! B does have more cells than A, with 10 alive cells compared to 4. (gives 3 stars)
Lesson 2: What Do Cells Do?
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- Last lesson, you learned that CGoL is made of cells that, collectively, make up a square grid.
- However, when you place the cells down, they don't just sit around doing nothing all day.
- Instead, the entire grid goes through generations, or iterations, which happen to every cell at once.
- During a generation, each cell changes state according a few simple rules:
- 1. If an alive cell is surrounded by two or three other alive cells, it stays alive.
- 2. If a dead cell is surrounded by exactly three alive cells, it becomes alive.
- 3. All other cells become dead. (So tragic.)
- Fortunately, in this program, you won't have to simulate any patterns yourself—the computer will.
- This lesson has an exercise, and in it, you'll just get to know the CGoL Simulator.
- To finish the exercise, all you'll have to do is run a certain pattern to a certain point.
Exercise
Objective: This is the CGoL Simulator. All you have to do here is run this sample pattern for 100 generations. You can see the generation number at the top.
Library: None.
Pattern:
Hint: You can run the pattern by pressing the ⏵ button at the top of the screen.
Win Condition: The pattern is run for 100 generations.
1 Star: None.
2 Stars: None.
3 Stars: The pattern is run for 100 generations.
Win Text: Great job! You'll learn more about what the pattern created in the next lesson.
Lesson 3: Basic Objects
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- When you ran that last pattern, the end result was that two different objects appeared:
- (click above to open LifeViewer)
- In this lesson, we'll look at both of these objects, and we'll even make another one in the Exercise.
- First, let's look at the 2×2 square on the left. This object is called a block.
- [viewer]
- As you saw in the pattern (hopefully), the block doesn't really look like it's changing.
- Similar objects are called still lifes, or still lives if your device has autocorrect.
- Now, the object on the right is a bit different. This object has been named the blinker.
- [viewer]
- However, it is actually not a still life, because it has two different states that it switches between.
- These different phases are what put things like blinkers in a different category, called oscillators.
- Oscillators also have a period, which is the number of phases it cycles through. A blinker has a period of 2.
- And, yes, still lifes are technically just period-1 oscillators, but it's easier to think of them as being…well, still lifes.
- In this lesson's exercise, you'll make another still life—the beehive.