Conway's Game of Life

This is an example of Conway's famous cellular automaton, Life. It is a demonstration interface and does not allow you to change the rules of Life. You can however, either globally or cell by cell, adjust which cells are on and off.

First, click the USE DELAY radio button or the software will run faster than you screen can print. You can adjust the amount of delay with the slider bar so that you get a speed that you like.

Then, press PLAY (the green arrow). The game of Life, starting from a pseudo-random seed of on/off states will play out, lasting a long time or a short time, depending on the particular relations among the cells in the cellular automaton.

Perturb. When you press the PERTURB button some pseudo-randomly selected set of cells will change state. By doing so, you can "provoke" Life into new patterns when it winds down to repetitive patterns (basins) or disappears altogether.

Perturb an individual cell. You can change the state of any single cell while the system is running simply by DOUBLE-clicking on the cell of your choice.

Perturb a selected set of cells. STOP the system (using the red circle button). Then double-click on an whatever set of cells you want. Double-clicking will change their state. Press PLAY again to restart the system with the seed cell states you designed.

Move Forward One Iteration. You can move the system forward one iteration at a time (when it is stopped) by pressing the double black arrow.

Number of Iterations Counter. The life of a particular "seed start" can be measured in iterations. The counter next to the play controls counts the total number of iterations run since you loaded this applet. [You may have to drag the separater bar between the control area and the cells to the right to be abIe to see the counter output.] The counter does not reset when you perturb or stop the system. To ge a fresh count, you nee to use your browser's Reload-webpage button to reload the applet.

Have fun. Most of the complex behavior you will see is a long (or short) tributary leading eventually into a basin cycle, though there are very long runs of Life that are to be discovered. If the system locks up into a simple repetitive pattern, you might explore (by double clicking on individual cells) just what small perturbations will provoke Life to a rejuvenated run of complexity. Remember, a complete set of darkened cells, frozen in that state, is still dynamic--the iterations are running, it's just that the cells are all in the Off state and have no way to change states without external perturbation. Thus, the Life works best as an open system (in which you are the window that opens the small game to the larger universe). If that's a metaphor for something,... well, OK.