Well, I’m inspired now.dvgrn wrote:Seems like the "Life pattern engineering experts" would really like to train new Life pattern engineering experts, if anyone is interested. But that never happens if new Lifenthusiasts just sit around waiting for the tired old experts to build the next strange and wonderful design.Moosey wrote:I can make a thread but I have practically nothing to contribute, and my rule of thumb for making threads I like is:
Make the thread yourself iff you will contribute.
But If you sayThen someone should make a thread. I can do it if nobody else wants to put their name on it but I think that you (dvgrn) or some other life pattern engineering expert should.dvgrn wrote: It would be a good challenge thread if someone wanted to work on it. It's not technically difficult. All the pieces are known, but they've never been put together in this particular way before.
If you start the thread, you may find that you have more to contribute than you think. This Half-Baked Super Constellation can be divided up into relatively simple pieces, and you can make a high-level blueprint that maybe people will be inspired to fill in.
One useful task would be to build modern Spartan-ish replacements for some of the useful technology in calcyman's Osqrtlogt pattern. For example, the microprogram storage units could be rebuilt to be self-constructing -- those are the two vertical lines, with honeybits and eaters to distinguish 1 from 0. The bigger unit is activated for the first time at T=1,920,000, and finished its first read cycle at T=11,000,550.
Or start smaller and easier, with the two-bit binary to unary converter:
I forget what the inputs and outputs do, but you can figure that out by inspection -- and then you can rebuild the same circuit at an order of magnitude or more smaller. Notice the whole Osqrtlogt is made out of Silver reflectors and other pre-Snark, pre-syringe, and sometimes non-slsparse-constructible stuff.Code: Select all
snip
There might not even be any timing constraints that would prevent each of the Osqrtlogt pieces from being replaced individually, eventually making the whole pattern smaller and lighter.
Basically, a superHBK is a giant constellation/SL which becomes a spaceship when hit by a glider-it turns into a UCC, reconstructs itself, and removes the UCC while simultaneously reconstructing the glider.
See discussion here for details.
Sorry for the OP post.
Re:
making things spartan:
which of these is more spartan? probably the bottom?
Otherwise there's an obvious improvement.
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x = 8, y = 16, rule = B3/S23
2o$o5b2o$b3obobo$3bobo$5bo$5bobo$6b2o5$2o$o5b2o$b3obobo$3bobo$4b2o!
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#C both are 5G, but I don't know which has a cheaper slow salvo synth. Near-certainly the bottom.
x = 29, y = 55, rule = B3/S23
24bo$22b2o$13bo9b2o$14b2o$13b2o3$15bo4bo$15b2o2b2o$14bobo2bobo2$27bo$
26b2o$26bobo16$15bobo$15b2o$8bo7bo$6bobo$7b2o3$9bo$10bo$8b3o3$11bo$11b
obo$11b2o9$2o$b2o$o!
I can't do this yet, of course, but I could perhaps help with the project in other ways.