This project is a c++ and OpenGL based front-end for playing around with various types of Cellular Automata (see the wiki for more information). I am writing this in my own time with no formal specification. A specific set of goals for this project can be seen in the TODO section, which will be changed and updated as I come up with new ideas and complete old ones.
Epilepsy Warning! May cause seizures!
Some configurations of 2D Lifelike Cellular Automata can result in flashing images.
This can be avoided by slowing down the simulation using the Iteration Delay
parameter. A safe setting would be 300ms (about 3fps) though you can adjust this
according to your own judgement (the default configuration of Conway's Game of Life should be fairly safe to experiment with).
Currently I have only implemented 2D Lifelike Cellular Automata, and the GUI layout is still a work in progress, so this section of the readme is limited and subject to change.
| a | b |
|---|---|
| Conway's Game of Life (B3S23) | Day and Night (B3678S34678) |
| Replicator (B1357S1357) | Custom ruleset (B1S1357G100) |
This project makes use of the following external libraries:
All credit for the afformentioned libraries goes to their respective author/authors.
The source code for ImGui, OpenGL, GLM, and stb is included within the project repository, and so they do not need further steps to install.
Follow the instructions at
(https://lazyfoo.net/tutorials/SDL/01_hello_SDL/linux/index.php)
to download SDL2. If you download using apt-get SDL2 should be placed in the
expected directory by default. If you download manually you will have to ensure
SDL2 is located somewhere CMake can find it, otherwise you may want to edit the
CMakeLists.txt file to look in the correct directory.
Follow the instructions at
(https://lazyfoo.net/tutorials/SDL/01_hello_SDL/linux/index.php)
to download SDL2. CMake expects to find SDL2 in the c:/programs/sdl/
directory.
Change to the project root and type the following:
cmake --build .This should create a new executable file called CellularAutomata. Running this
should start the application.
Note: You will need cmake version 3.17 or greater to build the application this way.
This project can be built using cmake with VisualStudio (I have only tried using version 2022 and do not know if other versions will work). It should be possible to build using CLion, though as of yet I have not been able to get this working due to issues with linking SDL2.
Throughout this readme I will be using the B/S/G rule notation to describe the rules
of a 2D Lifelike Cellular Atomata. The notation is formatted as B<0-8>/S<0-8>/G<1+> where
<0-8> is replaced by a sequence of numbers, and <1+> is any integer. The numbers following the B (Birth)
dictate how many neighbours a dead cell must have to become alive. The numbers
following the S (Survive) dictate how many neighbours a live cell must have to
stay alive. The numbers following the G (Generations) dictate how long a cell
must wait before it can become alive again (if omitted, it is defaulted to 1).
An example of this notation would be with Conway's Game of Life which is notated as
B3S32. This means that a dead cell will become alive if it has exactly 3 neighbours,
and a live cell will stay alive if it has 2 or 3 neighbours.
An example with generations would be the ruleset B1S1357G100. This means that
a dead cell will become alive if it has exactly 1 neighbour, a live cell will
stay alive with 1, 3, 5, or 7 neighbours, and a dead cell must wait 100 iterations
before it can become alive again.
Cellular Automata describes a set of simulations in which you apply simple rules to a grid of cells with a finite set of states. These rules will change the state of each cell based on the state of other cells (usually of the neighbouring cells).
See lifelike Cellular Automata for more information
Due to the sheer number of rules a Cellular Automata simulation can have in 2 dimensions and above, the classification of 'Lifelike' has been created to simplify the process to a more reasonable subset of rules.
A Lifelike Cellular Automata only considers the number of neighbours within the moore
neighbourhood (the eight immediate neighbours in a square grid, including diagonals)
and the state of the current cell. The well known Cellular Automata Conway's Game of Life fits the definition of Lifelike.
MIT License
Copyright (c) 2022 Stuart Manfred Lewis
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.