![]() It has been proven that the Game of Life is a universal Turing machine, meaning that if given infinite memory (in order to construct the structures needed) and infinite time, it can do any computation that a modern computer can do. In essence, it allowed the creations of counters and memory, which are the building blocks of a computer. It was a milestone in the sense that with only four simple rules and a two dimensional universe, scientists were able to create designs and complexity that rival that of life itself.Īn important part of Game of Life is the glider, which allowed information to be transmitted with a constant speed over long distance. A field that combines technology with physics, mathematics, biology, and complexity science to model life in the virtual realm. The creation of the Game of Life would herald the start of the field of cellular automaton. The majority of structures can be classified to: still lifes, oscillators, spaceships, and gun. In essence, the Game of Life is a zero-player game, where the course of the game doesn't require a player.įrom the four simple rules, a vast variety of complex structures is possible. The seed, the first of the each system is determined by the player, but all subsquent generations are the result of the initial seed without any human interactions. Any dead cells of exactly three live neighbors will come back to life.Any live cell with two or three live neighbors continues to the next generation.Any live cell with more than three live neighbors dies.Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbors dies.Four simple rules (based on models of population growth) dictate the state of any cell at a particular generation (each iteration of state):Ī diagram showing the rules from the first publication of the Game of Life. Each cell is influenced by the state of its nearest eight neighbors, in the cardinal and diagonal direction. The Game of Life is an infinite two-dimensional grid with square cells, that could be in either in a state of live or dead. The rules should be as simple as possible, whilst adhering to the above constraints.There should be potential for von Neumann universal constructors.There should exist small initial patterns with chaotic, unpredictable outcomes.Conway looked to simplify Von Neumann's mathematical models to four rules that the Game of the Life should maintain. John Von Neumann, of creating universal constructors that could build copies of itself. It was influenced by an idea proposed by the mathematician, Mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970. The full code for this article, which includes the gameoflife.js file, is available for download.Īn improvement to the interface would be to provide interactive user input to set the cells for the seed generation, but that’s beyond the scope of this demo.Glider - the simplest, but the most important pattern in Game of Life Ĭonway's Game of Life, also known more simply as Life, was a computer simulation created by the British Īnd that is all that’s needed for a minimalist implementation of Game of Life in a browser. This, however, is better left until we’re sure the code is functioning correctly and we know we can trap the three generation states listed above. As an alternative to using a button, the calculation of each successive generation could be automated by the use of JavaScript’s setTimeout() function. The seed generation can be calculated once the page has loaded, after which each button press will progress the game to the next generation. A grid of DIV elements could equally be used, as could a TABLE, but let’s bring Game of Life up to date by the use of HTML5 and CSS3.Īll that’s needed for the game board is a canvas element and a button to cause the next generation to be calculated. This example uses the CANVAS element to display the grid. HTML, CSS and JavaScript are all that’s required for the Game of Life.
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