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Automata: Like the Game of Life, but with violence
- lettergram 12y agoSeems as if pretty much every state is a steady state. Would be interesting if some were predators and others prey, with some feature that allows them to "starve"
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- DennisP 12y agoWatch longer. I drew a small block of pink and it took over a quarter of the board, then red swept everything. I spent an unreasonable amount of time rooting for pink.
- minimaxir 12y agoEvery time I add (pink) cells, they are always immediately killed. Is that intended?
- ianferrel 12y agoTry pausing it, then adding a larger clump.
- sconealone 12y agoPause it and add a blob. My pink blob made blue go extinct ):
- rsivapr 12y agoNice! I made something similar except it was more about how people are influenced by ideas of people around them and less about violence. link: http://goo.gl/H0Wqxo http://goo.gl/H0Wqxo
- bbcbasic 12y agoInteresting - red got blue and green into a corner, had time to gobble them up for itself, and then went on to defeat black!
- coyotebush 12y agoCool to watch, though this is a fairly straightforward model of complex contagion on a finite grid. It's similar to Conway's Game of Life in that there's a grid and local rules, but beyond that, the nature of the rules results in a different kind of behavior. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_contagion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_contagion http://www.ladamic.com/netlearn/NetLogo4/DiffusionCompetition.html http://www.ladamic.com/netlearn/NetLogo4/DiffusionCompetitio...
- ObligatoryRef 12y agoIt's interesting dumping groups of cells into different parts of the board and seeing how it reacts - a group in the middle of one color gets absorbed quickly, a group along the border of several colors hangs on for much longer, etc.
- jonahrd 12y agoIt would be a neat feature to allow us to upload an image of the right size as a seed for the game
- ChrisGranger 12y agoThat's a nice concept. Seeing how various seed images play out could be really interesting.
- wayspurrchen 12y agoThis is an awesome idea. I think I might do this next!
- a_olt 12y agoWithout pausing, just by rapidly adding pink cells at the borders between two colours, it is possible to make one of them go extinct. http://i.imgur.com/q2OIJNh.png http://i.imgur.com/q2OIJNh.png
- a_olt 12y agoHmm in some scenarios the colours would really benefit from forming an alliance... :) It's fun to watch how different stories unfold.
- eatitraw 12y agoSurprisingly interesting to play and watch. I would like more tools to add cells(mspaint-like)
- johnlbevan2 12y agoIndeed; I found that trying to help a side by adding to its numbers near to its borders typically resulted in that side dying off faster... unexpected.
- Robadob 12y agoSugarscape is another interesting cellular automata model. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugarscape http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugarscape
- luismarques 12y agoI implemented sugarscape some years ago and my findings contradicted the thesis of the book; instead of having some robust emergent results (like a Pareto distribution of wealth, IIRC), the results presented in the book could only be produced by carefully tweaking some parameters of the simulation. Furthermore, when implementing sugarscape I realized that the book didn't even specify what values were used for those parameters. While that shouldn't matter if the effects were robust, they were not. Unfortunately I don't remember the exact results, but I hope to look into this again when I have more free time. In sum, I thought the book was very interesting, but was quite disappointed when I tried to replicate (and extend) the experiments. Such is science... :-)
- rileyjshaw 12y agoOoh! Awesome :) I've got some similar demos for rileyjshaw.com/terra that I haven't thrown up yet, I'll see if I get a chance to this week. One fun advantage of doing this in Terra is that it supports periodic boundaries (meaning that there aren't any "safe" edges)
- fishtastic 12y agoThis game is quite different from Conway's Game of Life because it's not deterministic. During a turn, cells will rely on Math.random to find whether to move or divide; the direction that the cell move into is also randomized.
- sargun 12y agoAssuming the RNG is a deterministic random number generator, then that should make the entire game deterministic? Given independent runs, the decisions that each cell takes should occur in order, and therefore achieve the same result.
- infinity0 12y agoYou don't know what the starting internal state of the RNG is, so no you can't predict it. The starting internal state being secret is what gives PRGs their security.
- dragontamer 12y agoCrypto PRNGs are secure as long as their internal state is secret. Normal RNGs are not however. A common RNG under Unix used to cycle between even / odd every other number.
- jacquesm 12y ago> You don't know what the starting internal state of the RNG is, so no you can't predict it. You don't need to know that. All you need to know is that it is identical to the previous run.
- PavlovsCat 12y ago> You don't know what the starting internal state of the RNG is Unless you give it a seed manually, of course. Say, 42?
- jones1618 12y agoI agree, you can call it cellular automata if you want but it is false advertising to draw any comparison to Conway's Life. Still, it is fun an interesting but I would have found it more compelling if it didn't have a random component. That's part of the magic of Conway's life that complex results arise out of simple, deterministic rules. FYI: There have been many competitive versions of Life written over the years. Here's one: (Life As War)[http://www.ctrl-alt-dev.nl/Projects/LifeAsWar/LifeAsWar.html http://www.ctrl-alt-dev.nl/Projects/LifeAsWar/LifeAsWar.html]
- toxik 12y agoThere is something wrong with the game, the sum of the number of cells of each color is not constant. Also it for some reason got almost impossible to paint the board one color; beginning was easy enough. A splash was enough. Somehow the "end-game" is nearly impossible to complete. The very frustrating input method does not help the least. Otherwise, nice idea!
- soganess 12y agoIs: "Cells surrounded by three or more cells belonging to the same opponent are consumed", not the reason for the non-constant # of cells? I imagine that is the author's language for the fact cells get captured and turned. In fact, I don't see how it would possible for the # to stay constant; how would anyone color ever "win"(take over the board) if such a requirement was maintained? I also may not be correctly following your questions logic...
- sejje 12y agoThere are xxxx number of cells. The number displayed in each color block on the left is like a score, the number of cells it has. Adding together those numbers != xxxx.
- tokenizerrr 12y agoTry pausing the game before painting?
- rz2k 12y agoYou're right that there seem to be interaction rules that are not stated in the tips. If you play a long game, then new pixels added later in the game are wiped out easily. Having recently done some agent-based modeling work which is related to automata (even though in this case non-deterministic), I wanted to try out how few pixels I could add from the pseudo god mode to turn the tide in different situations. And, as you noted, late in a single game, established colors have some sort of implicit advantage with much higher numbers, regardless of how many new pixels you add. I also agree with you that the interface adds to the frustration. It takes a long time to place pixels, when I imagine the interesting part for most people is the result of different placements, not the challenge of getting the pixels into place.
- sean13013 12y agoreminds me a lot of an old multiplayer network game called "liquid war" http://www.ufoot.org/liquidwar http://www.ufoot.org/liquidwar http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj65vUy3rK8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj65vUy3rK8
- chrisfosterelli 12y agoI loved that game! I must've sunk countless hours playing against the AI's. For being so simple, it's remarkably fun.
- munkle 12y agoAlso reminds of another old game called 'Colors of War' http://colors-of-war.webs.com/ http://colors-of-war.webs.com/
- teddyh 12y agoA bit like A. K. Dewdney’s idea of the “voters” simluation (as seen implemented in the old xlockmore program mode “voters”).
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- arjie 12y agoInteresting. In this simulation, fighting on multiple fronts is optimal because then no single enemy can surround you. Funny. Leads to drawing along the borders being more significant than drawing within a solid colour block.
- lotharbot 12y agoInterestingly, being surrounded (the 4x8 rectangle others have posted about) is much stronger of a position than I expected. I thought my 4x8 rectangles would be quickly consumed, but instead they expanded into enemy territory.
- pervycreeper 12y agoOfftopic, but ".website" is pretty much the worst TLD conceivable.
- tomrod 12y agoWhy so?
- mef51 12y agocuz everythang with a TLD is a website! and it's long!
- jcfrei 12y agoI agree it's a strange TLD. But it's the other way around: A given TLD doesn't necessarily have to point to a web server/website at all - any kind of service could resolve this host name.
- saeguaiga 12y agoThus the '80s .darkweb, .free, .proxy, .milquetoast .ftp3 and .test, like .ipv6eternal, did not take, as properties for future rentiers. The idea of Conway with variable local neighborhoods died hard about as fast, with a small revival when it could be done on GPU. .cytokine anyone?
- pervycreeper 12y agoIf it's used for a website, it's redundant. If not, it's inaccurate.
- lettergram 12y agoIf you put a 4 x 8 purple block in the center of each color, the outcome will always be purple taking over the entire map. It seems like a fairly complex, and similar tactics in Go can achieve victory (victory being purple overtaking the map).
- javra 12y agoThat could be true, I won everytime I played the purple stones in Go.
- infinity0 12y agoPractise starting revolutions: colour the whole board white, and see which minimal combinations of black will eventually take over the board.
- flashman 12y agoNeeds population count as a live graph.
- bbcbasic 12y agoAnd an API.
- lettergram 12y agoI made a video on how to "win" at Automata with minimalist moves: http://youtu.be/hQhXFHmXDaA http://youtu.be/hQhXFHmXDaA
- clarkmoody 12y agoSelfish feature requests: +Better color scheme by default makes it easier on the eyes than full-saturation RED, GREEN, MAGENTA +Pick from existing colors to draw new cells +Time-series charts of per-color population counts +Draw on chart with default pointer instead of text select +Reset to default button Overall this is really interesting to look at. It doesn't really seem like it's that close to Conway's Game of Life, but it's an interesting nonetheless.
- hetid 12y agoThe same effect could be achieved by taking a low resolution image and each turn, making each pixel the color of a random neighbor. The only thing this has to do with the Game of Life is both can be simulated by copying one array to another and applying some simple rules.
- notastartup 12y ago5 minutes: The hordes of Lime Green grow stronger every second. We face a growing threat from the Blacks and the Blues to the east. I shall fight for a few more minutes. 10 minutes: We face complete annihilation from the unstoppable growth from Blacks. Lime Green horde is nearly decimated, it was only a few minutes ago they seemed unstoppable. 15 minutes: Lime Green have been completely annihilated! We are caught between the epic battle between Blacks and Blues. I rest for a few minutes. 20 minutes: We are caught in a stalemate with the Blacks. The eastern front bears the crushing weight of Blues onslaught of attacks and raids. The night is getting cold, we are tired.
- erikb 12y agoI coded nearly the same game as a Java desktop application in 2009. Can't find the binary anymore though. It's lots of fun if you can tune some parameters, like make one species more fertile (reproduces every time, while others reproduce only 50% of the time into empty space, etc), more aggressive (can consume when surrounds an enemy from only two sides), or more strategic (tries to make sure not to get its fighting line broken up by a lucky enemy).
- lkrubner 12y agoThe big surprise to me is that stability is possible in this game. Most of these games end in less than 60 seconds. The first several games I let run had unstable dynamics: one side gained an advantage and grew and grew until it took over the whole board, usually in less than a minute. But later, through experimentation, I found that stability is possible. The corners seem to be especially stable. I waited until the game had consolidated to 3 colors, then I created 4 new colors and added them to the corners (I slowed the game down to 500,000 milliseconds so I could have time to paint the corners, then I went back to 30 milliseconds). With 4 corners held weakly by 4 colors, and 3 large colors holding the center, the game is remarkably stable. I watched it, in the background, for several hours. One of the corners disappeared, but the other 3 corners held on. I went off to bed. In the morning, 2 more of the corners had been swallowed, but 1 of them still survived. These 4 surviving colors have been battling now for over 24 hours. The game has reached equilibrium.