Thread for basic questions

For general discussion about Conway's Game of Life.
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dvgrn
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Re: Thread for basic questions

Post by dvgrn » March 4th, 2021, 7:32 am

Donald Fe Trump wrote:
March 3rd, 2021, 10:55 pm
MathAndCode wrote:
March 1st, 2021, 11:10 pm
Here's a p73 oscillator:

Code: Select all

x = 9, y = 9, rule = Symbiosis
A$.B2.A$4.2B2.A$4.B2.BA$8.B$7.2B$7.B$8.A$6.AB!
It can also be viewed as a p82 block factory.
Why could the Oscillator's Period and the Factory's period be different?
It's rare for the output of a factory to change the phase of that same factory, making a different-period oscillator, but that's what is happening here:

Code: Select all

x = 29, y = 21, rule = Symbiosis
A19.A$.B2.A16.B2.A$4.2B2.A15.2B2.A$4.2B.BA15.2B.BA$8.B19.B$7.2B18.2B$
7.B19.B$8.A19.A$6.AB18.AB4$20.BA$19.A$20.B$19.2B$19.B$19.AB.2B$19.A2.
2B$23.A2.B$27.A!
#C [[ STOP 73 ]]
On the left is the unmodified p73 oscillator. On the right is the same oscillator being used as a factory, with the block being consumed by another copy of itself. When the block disappears, the oscillator follows a different evolutionary path, which happens to converge on the same oscillatory cycle nine ticks later, making a p82 oscillator. Similar things could be arranged in regular Conway's Life, but they're much more likely to happen in Symbiosis.

MathAndCode's p148 example from the same post, where the oscillator and factory periods are the same, is an example of a keeper reaction rather than a standard factory. It should really be labeled as a "pre-traffic-light factory", I think.
Donald Fe Trump wrote:
March 3rd, 2021, 10:55 pm
Is it allowed for a Factory to eventually crash?
Yes. In plain Conway's Life that is what usually happens to a factory if its output is not consumed by some external reaction. The third sentence in the LifeWiki (or Life Lexicon) definition of factory explains this.
Also, What is a Glider?
Please try a little harder to answer some questions for yourself, for example by looking up terms such as Glider (disambiguation) in the LifeWiki. That will allow you to ask more specific and interesting questions, like what exactly you don't understand about the definitions that are already readily available on the wiki. Posting questions just for the sake of posting questions can be something of a waste of everyone's time.

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Re: Thread for basic questions

Post by wwei47 » March 4th, 2021, 9:49 am

dvgrn wrote:
March 4th, 2021, 7:32 am
MathAndCode's p148 example from the same post, where the oscillator and factory periods are the same, is an example of a keeper reaction rather than a standard factory. It should really be labeled as a "pre-traffic-light factory", I think.
It's not a keeper. MathAndCode suppressed the blinker that the factory creates, but there's another blinker that MathAndCode didn't suppress that the factory consumed.
Help me find high-period c/2 technology!
My guide: https://bit.ly/3uJtzu9
My c/2 tech collection: https://bit.ly/3qUJg0u
Overview of periods: https://bit.ly/3LwE0I5
Most wanted periods: 76,116

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Re: Thread for basic questions

Post by dvgrn » March 4th, 2021, 10:57 am

wwei47 wrote:
March 4th, 2021, 9:49 am
dvgrn wrote:
March 4th, 2021, 7:32 am
MathAndCode's p148 example from the same post, where the oscillator and factory periods are the same, is an example of a keeper reaction rather than a standard factory. It should really be labeled as a "pre-traffic-light factory", I think.
It's not a keeper. MathAndCode suppressed the blinker that the factory creates, but there's another blinker that MathAndCode didn't suppress that the factory consumed.
Try deleting the blinker-that-MathAndCode-didn't-suppress, and you'll see that that p148 oscillator is in fact a keeper -- the period doesn't change, nothing is different whether the blinker is present or not.

The suppressing domino over on the left is actually suppressing a pre-traffic-light, turning it into a blinker. So the reference to a "p148 traffic light factory" is about the idea of removing that suppressing domino, and then adding some other mechanism to consume the traffic light (instead of turning it into a blinker).

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Re: Thread for basic questions

Post by wwei47 » March 4th, 2021, 11:04 am

dvgrn wrote:
March 4th, 2021, 10:57 am
The suppressing domino over on the left is actually suppressing a pre-traffic-light, turning it into a blinker.

Code: Select all

x = 21, y = 10, rule = Symbiosis
12.2A3.A$5.3A4.A.A.A.A$12.A.A.A2.A$3.A9.A5.A$AB.A10.4A2.A$3.A3.A11.A$
9.B5.A$5.2A3.2A.3A$10.A.A.AB$9.B2.B!
I only ever see a blinker.
Help me find high-period c/2 technology!
My guide: https://bit.ly/3uJtzu9
My c/2 tech collection: https://bit.ly/3qUJg0u
Overview of periods: https://bit.ly/3LwE0I5
Most wanted periods: 76,116

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Re: Thread for basic questions

Post by dvgrn » March 4th, 2021, 11:28 am

wwei47 wrote:
March 4th, 2021, 11:04 am
dvgrn wrote:
March 4th, 2021, 10:57 am
The suppressing domino over on the left is actually suppressing a pre-traffic-light, turning it into a blinker.

Code: Select all

x = 21, y = 10, rule = Symbiosis
12.2A3.A$5.3A4.A.A.A.A$12.A.A.A2.A$3.A9.A5.A$AB.A10.4A2.A$3.A3.A11.A$
9.B5.A$5.2A3.2A.3A$10.A.A.AB$9.B2.B!
I only ever see a blinker.
T=137 onwards, in your copy of the pattern, is a clear pre-traffic-light. Like I said, this shouldn't have been called a "p148 traffic light factory" -- it's only a p148 pre-TL factory, because the pre-TL hits part of the oscillator before it becomes a full traffic light.

It's still a valid pre-TL factory (if you remove the suppressing domino, especially) -- because if you add some other mechanism that eats pre-TLs and has the proper clearance, this object can perfectly well repeatedly build p148 pre-TLs for that mechanism. That hypothetical other mechanism has to use up the TLs in some way, similar to what the suppressing domino does but hopefully more interesting.

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Re: Thread for basic questions

Post by wwei47 » March 4th, 2021, 11:37 am

dvgrn wrote:
March 4th, 2021, 11:28 am
T=137 onwards, in your copy of the pattern, is a clear pre-traffic-light.
Correct, but the domino doesn't turn it into a blinker, it simply removes one of the two blinkers that the pre-traffic-light makes.
Help me find high-period c/2 technology!
My guide: https://bit.ly/3uJtzu9
My c/2 tech collection: https://bit.ly/3qUJg0u
Overview of periods: https://bit.ly/3LwE0I5
Most wanted periods: 76,116

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Re: Thread for basic questions

Post by dvgrn » March 4th, 2021, 12:35 pm

wwei47 wrote:
March 4th, 2021, 11:37 am
dvgrn wrote:
March 4th, 2021, 11:28 am
T=137 onwards, in your copy of the pattern, is a clear pre-traffic-light.
Correct, but the domino doesn't turn it into a blinker, it simply removes one of the two blinkers that the pre-traffic-light makes.
... And since the pre-TL crashing into the Symbiosis stator cells removes two of the other blinkers in the TL, the domino's removal of one more blinker does in fact complete the conversion of the pre-TL into a blinker.

I think you were right about this thing not really being a blinker keeper, though. There's a spark that removes the blinker if it's there, which means it sort of acts like a keeper for a few ticks. But if there was a blinker already there for some reason, then the pre-TL-to-blinker stage wouldn't work properly -- so it's not really a conventional keeper.

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Re: Thread for basic questions

Post by Donald J Trump » March 5th, 2021, 4:04 am

Donald Fe Trump wrote:
March 3rd, 2021, 10:55 pm
MathAndCode wrote:
March 1st, 2021, 11:10 pm
Tenth edit: Here's a p148 blinker factory:

Code: Select all

x = 17, y = 8, rule = Symbiosis
10.3A2.2A$10.A.2A$AB8.A5.A$11.A$9.B.2A2.A$10.2A.3A$10.A.A.AB$9.B2.B!
It can also be viewed as p148 traffic light factory.
MathAndCode wrote:
March 3rd, 2021, 9:52 pm
Yet another edit: Here's a p73 oscillator:

Code: Select all

x = 9, y = 9, rule = Symbiosis
A$.B2.A$4.2B2.A$4.B2.BA$8.B$7.2B$7.B$8.A$6.AB!
It can also be viewed as a p82 block factory.
Why could the Oscillator's Period and the Factory's period be different?
Is it allowed for a Factory to eventually crash?
Also, What is a Glider ?
The Herschel in Honeylife found cooperatively by me and the leader is an example.

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Re: Thread for basic questions

Post by hotdogPi » March 6th, 2021, 4:07 pm

Does this common sequence have a name? It's short and not a methuselah, like teardrop and butterfly, but since its output is a single blinker, we can't give a name to the constellation, so we need to give a name to the sequence.

Code: Select all

x = 3, y = 4, rule = B3/S23
o$2o$obo$bo!
User:HotdogPi/My discoveries

Periods discovered: 5-16,⑱,⑳G,㉑G,㉒㉔㉕,㉗-㉛,㉜SG,㉞㉟㊱㊳㊵㊷㊹㊺㊽㊿,54G,55G,56,57G,60,62-66,68,70,73,74S,75,76S,80,84,88,90,96
100,02S,06,08,10,12,14G,16,17G,20,26G,28,38,47,48,54,56,72,74,80,92,96S
217,486,576

S: SKOP
G: gun

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Re: Thread for basic questions

Post by MathAndCode » March 6th, 2021, 4:08 pm

hotdogPi wrote:
March 6th, 2021, 4:07 pm

Code: Select all

x = 3, y = 4, rule = B3/S23
o$2o$obo$bo!
I've always thought of the third generation as angel.
I am tentatively considering myself back.

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Re: Thread for basic questions

Post by creeperman7002 » March 7th, 2021, 3:26 pm

Why are spaceships in rules with few transitions so wide?

Example:

Code: Select all

x = 37, y = 15, rule = B3/S2
3bo7bo13bo7bo$2b2ob3o2b2obo9bob2o2b3ob2o$obo5bo2bob2o7b2obo2bo5bobo$2o
5bo7bo5bo7bo5b2o$6bo2bo2bo3bo3bo3bo2bo2bo$5bo10bo3bo10bo$4bo3bo8bobo8b
o3bo$3bo3b2o6bobobobo6b2o3bo$3bo4bo6bo5bo6bo4bo$16b2ob2o$8b2o7bobo7b2o
$9b4ob2o5b2ob4o$9bo4bo3bo3bo4bo$10b2o2bobo3bobo2b2o$10b3o2bobobobo2b3o
!
B2n3-jn/S1c23-y is an interesting rule. It has a replicator, a fake glider, an OMOS and SMOS, a wide variety of oscillators, and some signals. Also this rule is omniperiodic.
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=4856

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Re: Thread for basic questions

Post by JP21 » March 7th, 2021, 10:15 pm

creeperman7002 wrote:
March 7th, 2021, 3:26 pm
Why are spaceships in rules with few transitions so wide?
My guess is that fewer transitions means fewer ways of cells interacting, which leads to wide spaceships.

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Re: Thread for basic questions

Post by goldenratio » March 8th, 2021, 1:10 am

JP21 wrote:
March 7th, 2021, 10:15 pm
creeperman7002 wrote:
March 7th, 2021, 3:26 pm
Why are spaceships in rules with few transitions so wide?
My guess is that fewer transitions means fewer ways of cells interacting, which leads to wide spaceships.
Not really, it's more of a lack of forward-growth engines, which makes any such engines very large.

It's not limited to implosive rules either; for example 3c/7 ships in Life are really wide compared to other velocities because 3c/7 forward movement engines are very rare.
Oscillator discussion is boring me out. I'll return when the cgol community switches to something else.

Me on LifeWiki

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Re: Thread for basic questions

Post by Dylan Chen » March 9th, 2021, 12:42 am

It is a simple question about soup searching.
  • Why everyone is searching asymmetric soups? (C1+G1) instead of higher symmetry?


Edit
when scrolling this threads, I found that maybe I could answer some questions.
GUYTU6J wrote:
August 31st, 2019, 1:30 pm
How much CO2 does a computer emit for apgsearching one soup in B3S23/C1 on average? And how much energy does it cost?
a few days ago, on the discord channel, I happened to considering a similar questions.
the cost of C1+G1 is 10,000$ electricity, 60t of CO2 emissions (assuming 6kg CO2 for 1$ electricity )

and we have some more interesting discussion:
1kWh=3.6*10^6J ; 1kWh= 1 new object= 190*10^7 soups
which means 528 C1 soups= 1J of energy
or 1W = 528 soups/s
wolfram told me that, the energy of sun is 3.83×10^26 W (watts)
so we have at most 2*10^29 soups per second in our solar system (at current computing efficiency)

the total electricity of world 2.31×10^12 watts
which means it can finish all the C1 soups 4.8*10^13 in 1/25 second.


toroidalet wrote:
February 20th, 2021, 4:54 pm
There are currently 8899 xs20's with only one (C1) soup and a similar number of xs21's.

An extremely optimistic bound on the rarity of your still life would be the other one squared times some really small constant (probably requiring a few septillion-nonillion (10^24-10^30) soups). However, the predecessor doesn't work when there are 2 copies, so it would probably be much, much rarer than that, so it is most likely somewhere in the "probably will never appear" department. (remember that the massive still lives that have appeared already are ones with relatively simple predecessors, and this one might not be so lucky)
Yes, I also curious about the "probably will never appear" department. so I did some statistic analysis: statistics based on textcensus.csv

a common belief is that some of still lifes (like <xs20) would appear in C1 soups, while the crazy large ones would never show up.
Currently, among 112k possible xs20s, only 21k of them have occured naturally, 6000+ of xs20s only occured for 1 time. the distribution is so uneven, that the most frequent xs20 occuered 553 million times, more than every xs20 else combined.
Tools should not be the limit.
Whether your obstacle is a script, an stdin, or Linux environment computing resouces.
check New rules thread for help.

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Re: Thread for basic questions

Post by Donald Fe Trump » March 10th, 2021, 2:46 am

Could you tell me how to find an "apgcode" of a pattern?

Sorry, I'm not very good at English.

Also, does anyone have a list of patterns that also mentions "apgcode"?

How should I make some code show in viewer?

x = 18267, y = 19225, rule = B37/S238
2ob2o2$o3bo2$2ob2o!

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Re: Thread for basic questions

Post by dvgrn » March 10th, 2021, 8:13 am

Donald Fe Trump wrote:
March 10th, 2021, 2:46 am
Could you tell me how to find an "apgcode" of a pattern?
Put the pattern in Golly, then run biggiemac's script. That will only produce a result if it's an object that would show up in a Catagolue census, though. You can adapt the canonise_orientation() function in biggiemac's script to produce apgcodes for any arbitrary pattern.
Donald Fe Trump wrote:
March 10th, 2021, 2:46 am
Also, does anyone have a list of patterns that also mentions "apgcode"?
You can find the apgcodes of a lot of common patterns by looking them up on the LifeWiki, though that's not exactly a list. Catagolue textcensus lists like this one have lists of apgcodes, but don't mention the common names. The regular census pages have both apgcodes and common names when they're available. Here again, adapt canonise_orientation() if you need to build your own list.
Donald Fe Trump wrote:
March 10th, 2021, 2:46 am
How should I make some code show in viewer?
In the message editor, select your pattern RLE and click the </> menu button at the top of the text area. This will wrap your RLE in [code​] tags, which signals LifeViewer to pick it up and display it.

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Re: Thread for basic questions

Post by yujh » March 12th, 2021, 9:40 am

A New user guide to all users?
Is That Necessary?
I think there should be some rules to stop people’s argument in the game of life and we need more strict rules to stop triple posting(encourage editing!!!, but not too much), and of course, low period-oscs

I wouldn’t like to see a thread like this:

Code: Select all

soup
Soup
Soup
Soup’
Meth that is obviously<1000 gens
Oh here’s a sl
c/2
C/2
C/2ship again
No offense.
Rule modifier

B34kz5e7c8/S23-a4ityz5k
b2n3-q5y6cn7s23-k4c8
B3-kq6cn8/S2-i3-a4ciyz8
B3-kq4z5e7c8/S2-ci3-a4ciq5ek6eik7

Bored of Conway's Game of Life? Try Pedestrian Life -- not pedestrian at all!

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Re: Thread for basic questions

Post by C28 » March 12th, 2021, 1:38 pm

how do i find the growth rate of this pattern?

Code: Select all

x = 32, y = 25, rule = B3/S23
11b3o3b3o$11bo2bobo2bo$11bo7bo$11bo7bo$12bobobobo2$15bo$14b3o$2bo5bo5b
3o$b3o3b3o$2obo3bob2o$3o5b3o$3o5b3o11b3o3b3o$b2o5b2o11bo2bo3bo2bo$24b
o3bo$5bo18bo3bo$4b3o14bobo5bobo$3bo3bo$3bo3bo17b3o$25b3o$3bo3bo17b3o$
3bo3bo$3b2ob2o$4bobo18b3o$5bo19b3o!
- Christopher D'Agostino

adopted father of the U-turner

Code: Select all

x = 11, y = 15, rule = B3/S23
9bo$8bobo$8bobo$9bo8$b3o$b3o$obo$2o!
the U-turner gallery
255P132
B3/S234z (Zlife)

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Re: Thread for basic questions

Post by bubblegum » March 12th, 2021, 1:45 pm

C28 wrote:
March 12th, 2021, 1:38 pm
how do i find the growth rate of this pattern?
It's O(n). (That's what you're asking, right?)
Each day is a hidden opportunity, a frozen waterfall that's waiting to be realised, and one that I'll probably be ignoring
sonata wrote:
July 2nd, 2020, 8:33 pm
conwaylife signatures are amazing[citation needed]
anything

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Re: Thread for basic questions

Post by dvgrn » March 12th, 2021, 1:54 pm

bubblegum wrote:
March 12th, 2021, 1:45 pm
C28 wrote:
March 12th, 2021, 1:38 pm
how do i find the growth rate of this pattern?
It's O(n). (That's what you're asking, right?)
If that's _not_ what you're asking, then...

Run the pattern in Golly until the temporary stuff at the beginning settles down and you can see that the puffer is just repeating.

Find any point in the puffer ash's evolution where something easily recognizable happens, like the point when the last active pattern finally settles into stable ash. Set that to be T=0, and run the pattern until the exact same thing happens again farther up.

That will happen every 384 ticks -- and the spatial periodicity of the repeating ash is 192 cells, which makes sense for a puffer moving at c/2.

Every time you run the pattern another 384 ticks, it will add another 492 cells to its population. So 492 cells per 384 ticks is the pattern's growth rate.

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Re: Thread for basic questions

Post by C28 » March 12th, 2021, 2:02 pm

bubblegum wrote:
March 12th, 2021, 1:45 pm
C28 wrote:
March 12th, 2021, 1:38 pm
how do i find the growth rate of this pattern?
It's O(n). (That's what you're asking, right?)
i was asking how do i find the growth rate. i wasn't asking for the growth rate(but thanks for telling me anyways).
p.s. i don't have access to Golly
- Christopher D'Agostino

adopted father of the U-turner

Code: Select all

x = 11, y = 15, rule = B3/S23
9bo$8bobo$8bobo$9bo8$b3o$b3o$obo$2o!
the U-turner gallery
255P132
B3/S234z (Zlife)

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Re: Thread for basic questions

Post by bubblegum » March 12th, 2021, 2:06 pm

C28 wrote:
March 12th, 2021, 2:02 pm
i was asking how do i find the growth rate. i wasn't asking for the growth rate(but thanks for telling me anyways).
p.s. i don't have access to Golly
LifeViewer has a graph feature (Settings->Graph), which lets you eyeball the rate (this one grows linearly).
Each day is a hidden opportunity, a frozen waterfall that's waiting to be realised, and one that I'll probably be ignoring
sonata wrote:
July 2nd, 2020, 8:33 pm
conwaylife signatures are amazing[citation needed]
anything

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Re: Thread for basic questions

Post by MathAndCode » March 12th, 2021, 3:41 pm

Is there a way to find out what patterns that are already known in B3S23 also work in a similar rule that is more efficient than looking at the patterns' minimum and maximum rules individually?
I am tentatively considering myself back.

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Re: Thread for basic questions

Post by mniemiec » March 12th, 2021, 3:55 pm

MathAndCode wrote:
March 12th, 2021, 3:41 pm
Is there a way to find out what patterns that are already known in B3S23 also work in a similar rule that is more efficient than looking at the patterns' minimum and maximum rules individually?
It depends on the context, i.e. where is the pattern coming from? For example, Catagolue already does this for you.

For still-lifes, this is easy; just examine the neighborhoods of every cell to see which possible neighborhoods are involved, and any that never occur are "don't care" neighborhoods that can be either enabled or disabled in a rule, with no difference in the effect.

For oscillators and spaceships, it becomes more complicated, as you must do this for every generation in the pattern (and you must first generate all of them). This can be further muddied by the fact that some patterns still work in some rules, but evolve differently, so not all generations are the same. E.g. in EightLife (B3/S238), pentadecathlon https://catagolue.appspot.com/object/xp ... 4r4/b3s238 is still a period 15 oscillator, but generations 2 and 4 have additional cells that don't occur in the Life version. Even worse, in HighLife (B36/S23), cuphook https://catagolue.appspot.com/object/xp ... x33/b36s23 still works, but is period 4 rather than period 3.

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Re: Thread for basic questions

Post by MathAndCode » March 12th, 2021, 4:08 pm

mniemiec wrote:
March 12th, 2021, 3:55 pm
It depends on the context, i.e. where is the pattern coming from? For example, Catagolue already does this for you.
I created SnakeLife recently and want to know what sparkers also work there.
I am tentatively considering myself back.

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