Life

Java Life 2D, Life 3D, Life 4D, Ant 2D, Ant 3D, and Loop

Java Life2D

Here is a simple 2D Life viewer (much borrowed from xlock C code). It not only supports square life, but hexagonal, triangular, and even pentagonal life. The square stuff you probably have seen before... The hexagonal includes life forms discovered by Callahan, Andreen, and Bays. The triangular life with 12 neighbors includes many life forms discovered by Carter Bays including 2 gunships. Newly added is the pentagonal life (Cairo or basket weave tiling) including a glider discovered by Carter Bays and one found by me. Ideas on improving and bug fixes will be kindly received. :) Neighbors value of 3 or 4 are also possible but does not seem to produce gliders without the rule causing random patterns to expand without bounds. See notes for more info.

Neighbors	Tiling Configuration	Applet
5	Pentagonal (Cairo Tiling)
6	Hexagonal
7	Pentagonal (Cairo Tiling)
8	Square
9	Triangular (no far corners)
12	Triangular

You can download the jar file (preserve the .jar extension), and then it can be run as an application like "java -jar Life2DApp.jar".

Java Life3D

Here is a simple 3D Life viewer (much borrowed from xlock C code). It not only supports cubical life, but rhombic dodecahedral life and truncated octahedral life as well. See notes for more info. I did not want to complicate it with Java3D, since it is a very simple 3D display, and wanted speed. Though it may be nice... Neighbors value of 6 and 8 also possible.

Neighbors	Tiling Configuration	Applet
12	Rhombic Dodecahedral (Hexagonal Close Packing)
14	Truncated Octahedral (Cubic Close Packing)
18	Cubical (Edges and Corners)
-18 (alt 18)	Rhombic Dodecahedral (Moore Neighborhood)
20	Cubical (Faces and Edges)
26	Cubical

You can download the jar file (preserve the .jar extension), and then it can be run as an application like "java -jar Life3DApp.jar".

Java Life4D

Here is a simple 4D Life viewer (much borrowed from Life3D). It not only supports tesseractic life, but icositetrachoric life as well. See notes for more info. Other neighbors value of 8, ..., 56, 72 are also possible, but not explored. Do not expect to magically "see" 4D objects... currently only give one 3D view (a zone) at a time.

Neighbors	Tiling Configuration	Applet
24	Icositetrachoric
80	Tesseractic

You can download the jar file (preserve the .jar extension), and then it can be run as an application like "java -jar Life4DApp.jar".

See project notes for todo list and history. Please let me know if I left out anything.

Java Ant2D

Here is a simple Langton's Ant viewer (much borrowed from xlock's loop). Much of it not tested. This one even has one on a Cairo Tiling.

Neighbors	Tiling Configuration	Applet
3	Triangular
4	Square
5	Pentagonal (Cairo Tiling)
6	Hexagonal

You can download the jar file (preserve the .jar extension), and then it can be run as an application like "java -jar Ant2DApp.jar".

Java Ant3D

Here is a simple Langton's Ant viewer (much borrowed from xlock's ant3d). Much of it not tested. This one has a rhombic dodecahedral one in addition.

Neighbors	Tiling Configuration	Applet
6	Cubical
12	Rhombic Dodecahedral

You can download the jar file (preserve the .jar extension), and then it can be run as an application like "java -jar Ant3DApp.jar".

Java Loop

Here is a simple Langton's Loop viewer (much borrowed from xlock's loop). Much of it not tested. This one has a hexagonal one in addition. Make the field bigger and it will produce a 2 armed mutant. Also when these loops die they seem to erase themselves (both features were serendipitous).

Neighbors	Tiling Configuration	Applet
4	Square
6	Hexagonal

You can download the jar file (preserve the .jar extension), and then it can be run as an application like "java -jar LoopApp.jar".

Source and Jar Files

More 3D Life and 4D Life stuff

John Conway's Life was initially explored in 3D by Carter Bays.

A very useful tool by Lee Meeker for finding life forms (particularly 3D and 4D) can be found at xl4d. You will need X to run it (Windows users download Cygwin and also the programming tools and X found there).