Game of Life

Java Life 2D, Life 3D, Life 4D, Ant 2D, Ant 3D, and Loop

Contents

Life2D

Here is a simple 2D Game of Life viewer. It not only supports square life, but hexagonal, triangular, and even pentagonal life. The square stuff you probably have seen before... The hexagonal includes life forms discovered by Callahan, Andreen, and Bays. The triangular life with 12 neighbors includes many life forms discovered by Carter Bays including 2 gunships. Newly added is the pentagonal life (Cairo or basket weave tiling) including a glider discovered by Carter Bays and one found by me. Many patterns discovered by Bays or myself. Ideas on improving and bug fixes will be kindly received. :) Neighbors value of 3 or 4 are also possible but does not seem to produce gliders without the rule causing random patterns to expand without bounds. See notes for more info.

Life 2D Table

Different Life 2D Configurations

Icon	Neighbors (bounded rules with gliders)	Tiling Configuration
	5 (5B2/S24)	Pentagonal (Cairo Tiling)
	6 (6B2/S35, 6B2a/S2b34 Callahan, 6B2a3a4b/S2a2b4a Andreen)	Hexagonal
	7 (7B346/S23)	Pentagonal (Cairo Tiling)
	8 (8B3/S2a2b2c2d3 Maydwell, 8B3[6]/S23, 8B3[6]/S245, 8B36-8/S346-8)	Square
	9 (9B3/S34)	Triangular (no far corners)
	12 (12B3/S2, 12B3/S27[8], 12B4/S35, 12B4/S356, 12B4/S4-6, 12B45/S23, 12B45/S34, 12B4-6/S12, 12B4-6/S23, 12B4-6/S34, 12B4-6/S45, 12B46/S24[6], 12B46/S35[6])	Triangular
	8 (4 State) simulates 3D B5/S6-8 between barriers	Square

You can download the jar file (preserve the .jar extension), and then it can be run as an application like "java -jar Life2DApp.jar". (The puzzles used to be able to run as applets but browsers and Oracle have dropped support.)

Life3D

Screenshot shown here running as: "java -jar Life3DApp.jar"

Here is a simple 3D Life viewer It not only supports cubical life, but rhombic dodecahedral life and truncated octahedral life as well. See notes for more info. Many patterns discovered by Bays and myself. Other neighbor values of 6, 8, and alt 14 are possible. Alternated cubic honeycomb tetrahedral/octahedral is neatest so far is the 22 neighbor tetrahedron only.

Life 3D Table

Different Life 3D Configurations

Icon	Neighbors (bounded rules with gliders)	Tiling Configuration
	12 (12B3/S3, 12B3/S4-6)	Rhombic Dodecahedral (Hexagonal Close Packing)
	14 (14B4/S34)	Truncated Octahedral (Cubic Close Packing)
	18 (18B4/S45 non-bounded)	Cubical (Edges and Corners)
	alt 18 (-18B4/S36, -18B4/S46)	Rhombic Dodecahedral (Moore Neighborhood)
	20 (20B4/S45 non-bounded)	Cubical (Faces and Edges)
	22 (22B4/S4)	Tetrahedral (Tetrahedrons of Alternated Cubic Honeycomb)
	26 (26B5/S23, 26B5/S25, 26B5/S27, 26B5/S35, 26B5/S36, 26B5/S37, 26B5/S38, 26B5/S4, 26B5/S45, 26B5/S47, 26B5/S56, 26B5/S58, 26B5/S6-8, 26B5/S8, 26B58/S58, 26B6/S5-7, 26B6/S57, 26B67/S57, 26B67/S67)	Cubical

You can download the jar file (preserve the .jar extension), and then it can be run as an application like "java -jar Life3DApp.jar". (The puzzles used to be able to run as applets but browsers and Oracle have dropped support.)

Life4D

Here is a simple 4D Life viewer (much borrowed from Life3D). It not only supports tesseractic life, but icositetrachoric life as well. See notes for more info. Other neighbors value of 8, ..., 56, 72 are also possible, but not explored. Do not expect to magically "see" 4D objects... currently only give one 3D view (zone) at a time.

Life 4D Table

Different Life 4D Configurations

Icon	Neighbors (bounded rules with gliders)	Tiling Configuration
	24 (24B4/S67, 24B4/S6-8)	Icositetrachoric
	alt 32 (-32B58/S8)	Icositetrachoric (Moore Neighborhood)
	80 (80B9/S89, 80B_10/S8-_10, 80B_10/S9_10, 80B_10/S9-_11, 80B_10/S_11-_13, 80B_10/S_13-_17 80B_12/S_11-_15, 80B_12_13/S_11_12	Tesseractic

You can download the jar file (preserve the .jar extension), and then it can be run as an application like "java -jar Life4DApp.jar". (The puzzles used to be able to run as applets but browsers and Oracle have dropped support.)

See project notes for todo list and history. Please let me know if I left out anything.

Ant2D

Here is a simple Langton's Ant viewer There is even one with a Cairo Tiling.

Ant 2D Table

Different Ant 2D Configurations using Java

Icon	Neighbors	Tiling Configuration
	3	Triangular
	4	Square
	5	Pentagonal (Cairo Tiling)
	6	Hexagonal

You can download the jar file (preserve the .jar extension), and then it can be run as an application like "java -jar Ant2DApp.jar". (The puzzles used to be able to run as applets but browsers and Oracle have dropped support.)

Ant3D

Here is a simple Langton's Ant viewer This one has a rhombic dodecahedral one in addition.

Ant 3D Table

Different Ant 3D Configurations using Java

Icon	Neighbors	Tiling Configuration
	6	Cubical
	12	Rhombic Dodecahedral

You can download the jar file (preserve the .jar extension), and then it can be run as an application like "java -jar Ant3DApp.jar". (The puzzles used to be able to run as applets but browsers and Oracle have dropped support.)

Loop

Here is a simple Langton's Loop viewer This one has a hexagonal one in addition. Make the field bigger and it will produce a 2 armed mutant. Also when these loops die they seem to erase themselves (both features were serendipitous).

Loop Table

Different Loop Configurations using Java

Icon	Neighbors	Tiling Configuration
	4	Square
	6	Hexagonal

You can download the jar file (preserve the .jar extension), and then it can be run as an application like "java -jar LoopApp.jar". (The puzzles used to be able to run as applets but browsers and Oracle have dropped support.)

Source and Jar Files

Automata Table

Life/Ant/Loop Implementations for Java

Source Code	Jar File	Xml File
life2d.zip	Life2DApp.jar	life2d.xml
life3d.zip	Life3DApp.jar	life3d.xml
life4d.zip	Life4DApp.jar	life4d.xml
ant2d.zip	Ant2DApp.jar
ant3d.zip	Ant3DApp.jar
loop.zip	LoopApp.jar

See project notes for todo list and history. Please let me know if I left out anything.

Notes

John Conway's Life was initially explored in 3D by Carter Bays.

A very useful tool by Lee Meeker for finding life forms (particularly 3D and 4D) can be found at xl4d. You will need X to run it (Windows users download Cygwin and also the programming tools and X found there).