Conway’s Game of Life is a cellular automaton devised by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970. The game is a zero-player game, meaning that its evolution is determined by its initial state, requiring no further input.
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). Every cell interacts with its eight neighbors, which are the cells that are horizontally, vertically, or diagonally adjacent. At each step in time, the following transitions occur:
Mike’s implementation of Conway’s Game of Life allows for checkerboard or various density random Start Patterns. Color Schemes include pixelated and color tweaked original photography by Mike, and ; which is based on a stuffed animal that Mike has had since he was a child; a brightened version of the ; dynamic random color or grayscale cells; and various solid color cells. Selecting P(α) will specify the probability of a single “alpha particle” (or cell toggle) to happen for each generation. Setting this to anything other than 0% will add some randomness to the system.
When the “Align Top” button is pressed the page scrolls to align the entire grid on the page. The game will restart by using the “Restart” button or if the size of this page changes.
The “life bar” at the bottom of the grid indicates the current, minimum, and maximum number of living cells.