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1. Description
The Game of Life is one of the most famous cellular automata rules. It was developed by John Conway and popularized by Martin Gardener in his Mathematical Games in Scientific American in 1970 (Scientific American 223(4), October, 1970, pp 120-123).
The Game of Life, simply stated, is a two-dimensional cellular automata universe governed by a simple set of birth, death and survival rules. Each cell in the two-dimensional universe can be in one of two states: alive or dead. Whether a cell survives, dies or comes into being is determined by the number of live neighbors the cell has. The rules for survival,death and birth are as follows:
1. If a live cell has two or three live neighbors, it survives.
2. If a live cell has less than two or more than three live neighbors, it dies.
3. If a dead cell has exactly three live neighbors, it is born.
Applying these rules to an initial pattern, which is a collection of living cells in a universe of dead cells, can produce various configurations over generations. In this example, the pattern is called "glider". As the name implies, the pattern gradually "glides" to the lower right corner.
The Game of Life tutorial is available here.
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