Conway's Game of Life, in real life

> I figured out what would be a reasonable amount to spend on the project and then multiplied that by 10.

I like the way you think.

cjfd an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

When I was a teenager, I read a book about assembly language for the commodore and implemented the game of life in a really simple way. I just used the text screen. To switch on a cell, I would put an asterisk ('*') in it. Then I could run my machine code program and it would evolve according to the rules of the game of life.

	▲	abcd_f 24 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		And who didn't do that! :) You could also 4x the resolution by using half- and quarter-block characters from the top half of the ASCII table (or it'd be the PETSCII one i C64 case).

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Cthulhu_ 21 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I love this and would love to see it on a wall at our office or something like that. Maybe there's smaller/cheaper led/switches that would work in a handheld version.

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eps an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I saw one in a computer museum in Switzerland. It was a much larger field, it was just large orange LEDs (or were they tubes?), but it also cycled between a dozen of different cell automata games. Something about being able to see individual "pixels" made it really mesmerizing.

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PetitPrince 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My Alma matter has a jumbo version of this, in which the game if life is one of several available mode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioWall

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mastermedo an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A thousand bucks for 17x17 touchscreen. Add a painting frame, hang it on the wall, and you made yourself amazing art for cheap.

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vunderba 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Nice. A friend of mine just picked up a Linnstrument, and I’m very tempted to create a Conway’s Game of Life-based musical visualization for it.

https://www.rogerlinndesign.com/linnstrument

	▲	Cthulhu_ 18 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Neat! For homebrew / "iot" stuff, there's LED button panels like https://www.adafruit.com/product/1929 that could work.

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galaxyLogic 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I wonder is there a version GoL where every bit on a computer-display or LCD TV is one cell? How does it look?

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alex_duf 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Do you mean every pixel or every sub-pixel? Sub-pixel is interesting because the geometry of the grid isn't going to be the same from one screen to the other. It might also look compressed horizontally.

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eps an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Conversely, it'd be cool to play it on an large empty office building.

One window = one pixel.

	▲	slow_typist an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Like Blinkenlights https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PZRUtKYCpms

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slow_typist 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Très cool.

A grid of capacitive touch sensors could be printed directly on the pcb, bringing down costs by a degree of magnitude. Real switches are much more satisfying though.

	▲	f1shy 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I want to do a game like lights out. I'm thinking in 3d printing transparent caps and using dirt chip pcb switches and standard leds. The cost must be also down to 30 cts. Would be like a middle ground.

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Traubenfuchs 17 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Would be interesting to do this with people and observe the inevitable mistakes they make.

Now that would be simulating life witg life.

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CJefferson 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I've always wanted something like this board, buttons which can light up (preferably a few colours), to use to make games. Anyone ever found such a board which is hackable / programmable?

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Cthulhu_ 16 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

https://www.adafruit.com/category/280, they're ready made from 4x4 to 16x8 but in theory you can just put more modules into an enclosure.

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rmnclmnt 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Novation Launchpad used to be exactly that: you send MIDI CC messages with proper values and you can light up the grid (with different colors).

Did that a few years back, i guess this might still be possible

	▲	1313ed01 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> used to be Looks like they are still around? https://novationmusic.com/launchpad Also seems to be in stock locally. The device that I think popularized that design (citation needed) was the Monome (https://monome.org/) that looks like it is also still around and it has (always had?) some kind of open source license (https://github.com/monome).

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self_awareness an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's not a "physical" version of game of life -- that's a digital version, like every version, but with bigger pixels.

	▲	Cthulhu_ 15 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Does make me wonder if it's possible to make a physical / analog / mechanical version of Game of Life. fake edit: yes, kind of: https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/forums/topic/164622-moc-mec...
	▲	gspr an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I think "physical" refers to the fact that you initialize the state by pressing physical buttons. That's quite accurate.

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mkirsten an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It is beautiful

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fwipsy 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't want to build this or pay for it, but I really want to mess with it for an hour.

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shawoodle65 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

surprised this isn't talked about more

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gethwhunter34 14 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

tldr for anyone skimming: the key insight is in section 3