Conway's Game of Life is a cellular automaton that is devised by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970. It is a zero-player game, meaning that its evolution is determined by its initial state, requiring no further input.
Cellular automata is a discrete model of computation studied in automata theory.
Cellular automata have found application in various areas, including physics, theoretical biology , chemistry and computer science.
A cellular automaton consists of a regular grid of cells, each in one of a finite number of states, such as on and off.
A cellular automaton is said to be Life-like if it meets the following four criteria:
- It has two dimensions (i.e., n=2).
- It has two states, usually called OFF and ON (i.e., |S|=2).
- It uses the Moore neighbourhood.
- The new state of a cell in the next generation can be expressed as a function of the number of cells in its neighbourhood that are in the ON state and the cell's own state; that is, the rule is outer totalistic
Most popular Life-like cellular automaton is Conways Game of Life
GoL Game played on a 2D square grid. Each cell on the grid can be either alive or dead, and they evolve according to the following rules:
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Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies (referred to as underpopulation).
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Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives, unchanged, steps to the next generation.
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Any live cell with more than three live neighbours dies (referred to as overpopulation).
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Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours comes to life, (referred to as reproduction)
Finite State Machine for Game of life:
Game of Life functions according to the Conway's Game of Life Cellular rules:
Still Lifes:
Oscillators:
Spaceships:
