Game of Life

What does this Model Represent?

This model is an implementation of Conway's Game of Life. Conway's Game of Life is a cellular automaton designed with extremely simple rules that produce surprisingly complex results. Here are the rules for Conway's Game of Life:

• If you have less than 2 neighbors, you die of loneliness
• If you have more than 3 neighbors, you die of overcrowding.
• If you have exactly 2 neighbors, you stay alive if alive.
• If you have exactly 3 neighbors, you stay alive if alive, or are born if not alive.

What are the elements of this Model?

• start - acts as a switch to change the settings for running the game:
  • 0 = read initial values from the preset starting point (rows 200)
  • 2 = initialize a random setup with a specified density
  • 1 = turn the game on
• iteration - informs you of how many steps have been run in the model
• FillDensity - defines what density the game should be filled with when creating a random initialization
• Torus - defines whether the game should run with the sides “wrapped” around (1) or if the edges should be final (0)
• Display Level - Where you can view the game as it runs
• Compute Level - Where the values (1 for filled, 0 for unfilled) are calculated
• Setup Level - Defines the initial settings for the game
• Scratch Space - An extra board to play around with new configurations

How do I use this Model?

Running a preset world:

• Enter 0 into start and hit [Ctrl] [=]
  • The model will initialize
• Enter 1 into start and hit [Ctrl] [=]
  • The model will begin to run

Running a randomly-generated world:

• Enter a value for FillDensity
• Enter 2 into start and hit [Ctrl] [=]
  • The model will initialize
• Enter 1 into start and hit [Ctrl] [=]
  • The model will begin to run

What should I expect?

Specific interesting patterns can emerge from the Game of Life. Some formations are stable, and can continue running for the duration of the game. Some formations will run out after a short while.

Download the model file.