A good program to make complicated cellular automata with?

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KittyTac
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A good program to make complicated cellular automata with?

Post by KittyTac » December 22nd, 2017, 11:23 pm

I want to create a complicated cellular automaton with attraction, repulsion, and random walks, with long distances. Is there a good program for that?

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calcyman
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Re: A good program to make complicated cellular automata with?

Post by calcyman » December 23rd, 2017, 10:54 am

Can you possibly elaborate on what exactly you want to implement?

The most general way is to write the program yourself. Otherwise, you might want to investigate the following options, in increasing order of difficulty. They're all very versatile so you can create your own rules subject to the constraints of each program:
  • Golly supports arbitrary cellular automata with <= 255 states on the Moore neighbourhood;
  • Ready supports real-vector-valued cellular automata on arbitrary grids, with an emphasis on reaction-diffusion systems;
  • hex13 supports artificial chemistries on hexagonal grids, where colourful atoms move pseudo-randomly and can react (change internal state, bond with other atoms, unbond etc.).
It sounds as though the third of these is possibly closest to your description, but with chemical bonds instead of attraction/repulsion. Technically, it is a cellular automaton with 2^64 discrete states and a complex neighbourhood.
What do you do with ill crystallographers? Take them to the mono-clinic!

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KittyTac
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Re: A good program to make complicated cellular automata with?

Post by KittyTac » December 23rd, 2017, 11:02 am

I want to create an ecosystem simulation but I suck at coding, either Golly or the second one will probably suffice.

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