Game+of+Life+(Simeon)

Overview
“[|Conway’s Game of life]”, or Life for short, is a cellular automaton devised by British mathematician John Horton Conway. It is a “zero player game” meaning that after the initial input of the player there is no more input further required. The interaction people have with the game is simply to configure a combination of blocks and see how they evolve according to the preset mathematical rules. The Game of life is an infinite two-dimensional orthogonal grid of small squares each of which is in two possible states, dead or alive. In order for a cell to stay alive it must have more than two neighbors who are also alive. Any cell with more than three live neighbors dies. Any cell that is dead but has three live neighbors becomes alive. The game is said to simulate life itself. The squares with no neighbors represent beings that do not have enough help to survive, the blocks with more than two neighbors represent death de to overcrowding, and the re-generation of a dead cell represents reproduction. Conway originally offered a prize to anyone who could discover a pattern that moved infinitely within the games limit. A group of students at MIT discovered the first infinite pattern but there have been others who have cracked the code as well. Since the game’s inception there have been many variations upon it such as games like highlife. Other variations have brought the game into three dimensions, thus creating anpther state then just alive and dead. The Game of life has been used throughout electronic entertainment sources. In the video game [|Populous II] one of the effects is a fungus that grows according to the rules in the game of life. In music, the techniques in Conway’s game have been used, especially in MIDI sequences.

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