The Game of Life is an endless two-dimensional game of squared cells, created in 1970 by mathematician John Conway, who unfortunately died of complications from COVID-19 in 2020.
The game of life is such a cellular automaton that its behaviour resembles the development of a community of living organisms. It is played on an endless, square playing field. Each field (cell) can be in one of two states – alive or dead. There are only 4 rules in the game:
- Any live cell with less than two live neighbours dies.
- Any live cell with two or three live neighbours remains alive.
- Any live cell with more than three live neighbours dies.
- Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours becomes a live cell.
Once the default state is set at the beginning, the rules are applied and the next generation is created. And then more and more etc.… Conway called this process a game for 0 players.
Although the rules are very simple, the system can behave in many different ways. Some pattern types do not change from one generation to the next (still life), some pattern types constantly return to their initial state after a finite number of generations (oscillators), several types can travel across the field forever, much pattern types disappear. But a few of them grow indefinitely and form new cells.
Still life:
Block
Beehive
Loaf
Boat
Oscillators:
Blinker
1st generation
2nd generation
Toad
Beacon
