Conway's Game of Life Simulator
A simulation game modeling the birth, evolution, and extinction of life. Experience high-speed generation updates with the Bitboard algorithm.
Rules
- The universe of the Game of Life is an infinite, two-dimensional orthogonal grid of square cells, each of which is in one of two possible states, live or dead (or populated and unpopulated, respectively).
- 1. Any live cell with two or three live neighbours survives.
- 2. Any dead cell with three live neighbours becomes a live cell.
- 3. All other live cells die in the next generation. Similarly, all other dead cells stay dead.
- It is a zero-player game, meaning that its evolution is determined by its initial state, requiring no further input. One interacts with the Game of Life by creating an initial configuration and observing how it evolves. It is Turing complete and can simulate a universal constructor or any other Turing machine.
What is Conway's Game of Life?
The Game of Life is a cellular automaton devised by British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970. On a two-dimensional grid, cells with two states — alive or dead — evolve through generations following four simple rules.
The only input from the player is the initial configuration; after that, the system evolves automatically, which is why it is called a "zero-player game." A hallmark of the Game of Life is that remarkably complex patterns emerge from simple rules.
Patterns in the Game of Life fall into three main categories: still lifes (Block, Beehive, etc.), oscillators (Blinker, Pulsar, etc.), and spaceships (Glider, Lightweight Spaceship, etc.). The Glider, which travels across the grid indefinitely, is perhaps the most iconic pattern.
The Game of Life has been proven to be Turing complete, meaning it can theoretically simulate any computer program. This property makes it an important model in computation theory, complex systems science, and artificial life research.