What's in There

The rules of Conway's Game of LIfe are fairly simple. Given a grid of arbitrary size,  each individual cell (square) can be alive (filled in) or not-alive (empty). The game begins with a seed, a starting arrangement of alive (filled-in) cells and empty cells.  After the seed is composed,  game proceeds (the scene evolves) from turn to turn (generation to generation) according to the following rules:  

• Birth: An empty cell may come to life if it has exactly three live neighbors.

• Survival: A live cell with two or three live neighbors stays alive.

• Death by Isolation: A live cell with fewer than two live neighbors dies (as if by underpopulation).

• Death by Overcrowding: A live cell with more than three live neighbors dies (as if by overpopulation).

Despite these simple constraints, the Conway's Game of Life is "Turing complete," meaning it can technically perform any computation a computer can, given a large enough grid and the right seed.

Because it is a zero-player game, its beauty lies in the complex, often organic-looking patterns that emerge from that initial seed, ranging from static "Still Lifes" that never change to "Gliders" that travel across the grid

One of our first considerations when developing Cube of Life was whether it would need different rules, since 

• • Conway's square cells have up to eight living neighbors: 4 sides and 4 corners.  

  • Cubic cells have up to 0-26 living neighbors:  6 faces, 12 edges, and 8 corners. 

We concluded almost confidently that the rules should change, but we realized we did not know enough to discern what those new rules may be.  The cubic cell has 18/8 more neighbors than the square cell.   If Conway requires one living neighbor for birth, should we require ... 2.25? 

We decided to leave it up to you, with a settings panel that lets you control all of these things.   However, we have found different rule sets that have produced interesting (dare we say "living"?) outcomes, and we have provided some examples for you in preconfigured scenes.  

We also introduced a new concept: a Community (a set of contiguous cells) and a new rule parameter: the Birth Margin the number of empty cells that must separate an empty cell from a neighboring community in order for it to be born.