Edge Wrap
- With the edge wrap ON, the neighborhood of the cells on the borders of the grid extend to the opposite sides.
- Cells at the top of the grid have their northern neighbors on the bottom of the grid.
- Cells at the bottom of the grid have their southern neighbors on the top of the grid.
- Cells on the left side of the grid have their western neighbors on the right side of the grid.
- Cells on the right side of the grid have their eastern neighbors on the left side of the grid.
- With the edge wrap OFF, the neighborhood of the cells on the borders of the grid DOES NOT extend to the opposite sides.
- Cells at the top WILL NOT HAVE northern neighbors.
- Cells at the bottom WILL NOT HAVE southern neighbors.
- Cells on the left WILL NOT HAVE western neighbors.
- Cells on the right WILL NOT HAVE eastern neighbors.
Patterns
- Still Life
- Still Life patterns don't ever change if left to their own devices.
- Oscillators
- Oscillator patterns return to their original state, in the same orientation and position, after a finite number of generations.
- Spaceships
- Spaceship patterns reappear after a finite number of generations in the same orientation but a different position.
- Methuselahs
- Methuselah patterns evolve over many generations (at least 50 is often accepted) before stablizing.
- Infinite
- Infinite patterns simply grow forever.
Creating Your Own Pattern
- Check the Edge Wrap checkbox if you want the patterns to continue through to the opposite side (like Pac-Man, lol).
- Enter the number of cell rows and columns in the Grid Dimension textbox (currently only square grids are allowed so number of columns = number of rows).
- Select the size of the cells with the Scale dropdown.
- Select the rate at which the subsequent generations are displayed with the Rate dropdown.
- Click New Seed to generate the grid.
- Click on the cells you want to be alive.
- Click Start to let it run on its own.
- Stop will halt the progression.
- Click Step to step through one generation at a time. It will wait for you to click Step again before going on to the next generation.
- Show Neighbors will display the neighbors of the selected cell. One at a time please, lol.
- Reset will bring you back to the initial pattern on the grid.
- Clear Grid will make all live cells dead.
- Refresh starts completely over, like hitting F5.
- Save will save your seed pattern so you can run it again later.