My own version of John Conway’s cellular automaton.
I first read about it during lockdown, at a time when I was deep in Game Maker, DIY board games and the book Homo Ludens. Game of Life isn’t a game to play — a starting shape is set and from there it plays itself. Cells live, die or come into being according to four rules.
A few years later I built it again. Not to improve it, but to understand it. Building something a second time is a way of finding out what is actually in it.
- Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies, as if by underpopulation.
- Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives on to the next generation.
- Any live cell with more than three live neighbours dies, as if by overpopulation.
- Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours becomes a live cell, as if by reproduction.
