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vanGhost's John Conway's Life (PC)
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| [November 20, 2006 12:05:15 PM]
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My final round with "Life" was more interesting than I thought it could be after playing the first time. I started testing out scenarios, not necessarily identifying with the abstract little blocks but creating my own social experiments (if you will) to see how stable populations would react when faced with an outsider. Or what would happen when 2 stable populations were mixed. Would one absorb the other? Or would they both die?
I connected 2 stable populations of 6 cells together. This ultimately resulted in 10 stable populations. i connect one population of four by a single line to another. They died. Creating a block with six double squares and 2 hanging off one end created an interesting pattern of life movement where one piece breaks off and becomes stable while the other moves around the board like a bunch of gypsies.
It turned out to be a rather interesting game because it ultimately drew me into trying to determine what would kill or populate cells, and thereby allowing me to create my own little game. I don;t think I could play it for an extended period of time by any means. It was very abstract but very interesting none the less.
engulf a stable population then reform a stable one in a different shape. then some
populations were never "stable" they constantly fluctuated in an and out of the same shape
. interesting
sometimes trying to connect one population to another stable population would inturn kill them
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| [November 20, 2006 11:57:09 AM]
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The second time I played "Life," i decided to try a systematic approach to the game. After all, it is based on mathematics right? So this time I started playing the game by looking at all of the pre-configured examples: glider, small exploder, exploder, space ship,tumbler and gospel glider gun. This process proved to be the best way to ease my brain into connecting with the abstract dots that were living and dieing before my eyes. In the glider example, the cells move around until they hit the bottom of the screen, around 59 generations or so were the population becomes stable but, in my opinion, stagnant, because it quits moving all together. The small exploder only takes around 17 generations to create a stable population. The regular exploder produces a stable/unstable pattern because the pieces are constantly rotating around 3 different patterns. Therefore they are stable in their instability. The coolest was the space ship because it really started to illuminate the "life" the squares can take on as a population. Once it starts it moves across the screen bouncing around quite a bit before becoming stable. The tumbler was nothing much, as far as being able to connect to it, the blocks just sort of moved around in the same space over and over again, hence the name tumbler. Finally, the gospel glider gun. Whoa. Three of the starting squares move upward across
the board and "infect" the other square. then then produce "stable" pieces and
constantly move back and forth. It is really the best of the pre-configured patterns and really got me thinking about how to create a game out of this "game." The articles I read about it described it as a solitaire game, but even solitaire has a game, whereas this one does not. The game is sort of you creating your own game in the game. To this end I started creating geometric shapes or writing in numbers to see which created more stable populations. A square is more stable than a circle or triangle. And 1 becomes stable before 2 or 3. Interesting...
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| [November 20, 2006 11:41:27 AM]
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To begin with, here are the "rules" of the game:
For a space that is 'populated':
Each cell with one or no neighbors dies, as if by loneliness.
Each cell with four or more neighbors dies, as if by overpopulation.
Each cell with two or three neighbors survives.
For a space that is 'empty' or 'unpopulated'
Each cell with three neighbors becomes populated
I initiated some of the pre-configured runs such as glider and then tried to just experiment with the game and populate random cells with "life" and see what happened. Honestly, I wasn't that excited with the outcome. All I could see were patterns that the cells made. Since there are no characters per se it made it even harder to think about these abstract yellow colored little cells as anything more than little yellow squares moving around the screen. I think it is because the game is so abstract that it didn't catch my attention. But I vowed to play again...
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vanGhost's John Conway's Life (PC)
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Current Status: Finished playing
GameLog started on: Tuesday 7 November, 2006
GameLog closed on: Monday 20 November, 2006 |
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