Anyone here lived during the seventies, when the first computers came out? I know I didn't, but I just managed to dig up a really old game they had at that time, called the Game of Life.
What greets you when you open the game the first time, is this:
The yellow squares (or cells) are defined as life, whereas the grey ones are considered "dead". Every cell interacts with its eight neighbours, which are the cells that are directly horizontally, vertically, or diagonally adjacent. The rules are as follows:
Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies, as if by loneliness.
Any live cell with more than three live neighbours dies, as if by overcrowding.
Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives, unchanged, to the next generation.
Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours comes to life.
It might sound quite dull and not very interesting at all, but it is just simply amazing to watch all the complex patterns that arrive by just a tiny, chaotic start. Just hold your mouse in and put up some dots, set the game on fast mode, and watch how the "life" evolves. I guess I like this game because I can relate it to my biology studies, where we actually learn about concepts like this one (this is a extremely simplified version though, but it isn't a bad model at all). For those who feel the quirky feeling of wanting to play God, this might be the thing to check out. It's cool to look at :)
For a internet version of the game, click on the link :
Reminded me of a short from Robot Chicken, apparantly i could not find any link/leak on the Inturwebz, instead i came up with, what is possibly one of the more random things of the intertubes:
Wow we had to program this "game" in Java about 2 months ago xD
Well, you could choose between some assignments, and this one looked pretty interesting, but I didn't do it :P
Funny game though ^^
04/11/08 19:04
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