Extended pattern collection for Golly

[Hooloovoo]

I'm currently unable to download certain patterns in the Very Large Patterns page from within Golly. I tested with a couple-days-old build from git.

The patterns that don't work for me are: Hydra, Lighspeed Telegraph, 10hd Demonoid, 0E0P Metacell, and Mersenne-82589933. When I check the links in a browser (eg http://golly.sourceforge.net/patterns/hydra.mc.gz), I get a 404.

[dvgrn]

I'm currently unable to download certain patterns in the Very Large Patterns page from within Golly. I tested with a couple-days-old build from git.

The patterns that don't work for me are: Hydra, Lighspeed Telegraph, 10hd Demonoid, 0E0P Metacell, and Mersenne-82589933. When I check the links in a browser (eg http://golly.sourceforge.net/patterns/hydra.mc.gz), I get a 404.

Thanks for double-checking all these. I believe I've fixed all five problems, which were due to name changes, capitalization problems, and a few plain old mysterious absences.

What else would you say should make an appearance in Very Large Patterns, that isn't there at the moment?

[Hooloovoo]

I think a caterloopillar fits in the self-cons category. In the caterloopillar topic, you noted

Have been watching the Caterloopillar in action, and it's really impressive how many interlocking problems have been solved and wrapped up in a nice neat package.

and I agree.

Faster Caterloopillars are bigger, and have more relatively uninteresting block pushing in them, and are also harder to simulate, so I think one of the small or medium ones would be a good choice. Small ones have more space between each up- and down-going convoy, however. C/17 looks to me like a decent compromise.

Pattern files can be found at https://github.com/simsim314/Caterloopilar/

Is the entry in the lexicon good enough for comment text, or does it need more/different information?

[dvgrn]

I think a caterloopillar fits in the self-cons category... C/17 looks to me like a decent compromise.

Pattern files can be found at https://github.com/simsim314/Caterloopilar/

Is the entry in the lexicon good enough for comment text, or does it need more/different information?

It's starting to seem like a good idea to just give a short comment section for most of these large patterns, and then point to more information whenever that's available. It's usually not very easy to pack information into 70-column ASCII text in a readable way, so let's put the details on the LifeWiki instead.

Code: Select all

#C caterloopillar-c17.mc.gz
#C Michael Simkin, 9 April 2016
#C c/17 Caterloopillar
#C Caterloopillars are "strange-loop" adjustable-speed spaceships,
#C   where each half of the spaceship constructs the other half
#C   using slow-salvo technology.
#C Caterloopillars with many other speeds can be found at
#C   https://github.com/simsim314/Caterloopilar/
#C More details are available at these links:
#C   https://conwaylife.com/wiki/Caterloopillar/
#C   https://www.conwaylife.com/ref/lexicon/lex_c.htm#caterloopillar
#C   https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=29796#p29796
... 

I've put the c/17 Caterloopillar into Very Large Patterns with the above comments, but would be happy to check in a version with a bit more detail if someone wants to supply it. It may take a few refreshes or reloads to get the new version of golly-access.html to show up via Help > Online Archives, but it's out there.

[Hooloovoo]

It's starting to seem like a good idea to just give a short comment section for most of these large patterns, and then point to more information whenever that's available. It's usually not very easy to pack information into 70-column ASCII text in a readable way, so let's put the details on the LifeWiki instead.

That makes sense.


For some reason, when I load the caterloopilar. Golly defaults to RuleLoader instead of Hashlife. Comparing it to other VLPs, I don't see any immediate reason why that should be the case. The performance impact seems to be negligible, which seems weird to me, though I guess RuleLoader just uses Hashlife under the hood. It looks like an rle.gz is much smaller: 68k instead of 308k, and it looks like it doesn't change the algorithm when it's loaded. I've attached a .rle.gz with the comments from the .mc.gz

[dvgrn]

It looks like an rle.gz is much smaller: 68k instead of 308k, and it looks like it doesn't change the algorithm when it's loaded. I've attached a .rle.gz with the comments from the .mc.gz ...

Hmm, I always thought of the rule change that happens automatically for .mc and .mc.gz files as more or less a good thing. There are a number of patterns that run reasonably well in HashLife/RuleLoader but absolutely abysmally in QuickLife.

Opening an .rle or .rle.gz doesn't change the algo, as you say -- so if you've started in QuickLife you'll stay in QuickLife, and if you don't know to switch algos manually you won't have much success running the pattern. Hydra/QGC1 is the worst offender in this department -- it's also an .rle.gz. I should probably patch up the comments to say "switch to HashLife, if you haven't already!"

Of course, probably hardly anybody reads the comments anyway (!) Maybe a case could be made for a #CXRLE comment that suggests the default algo for the pattern, as well as the default rule. I do definitely prefer HashLife over RuleLoader myself, in spite of near-identical performance -- just don't like the red default color scheme for two-color RuleLoader (but haven't changed it in Preferences, just because it's a reminder that that's what everyone new to Golly will see.)

In any case, the c/17 caterloopillar doesn't do too badly -- QuickLife gets it through one period plenty fast enough, at least, and you can see everything there is to see from that. As far as I can see the .mc.gz version was only 110K, not 300K+, but 68K is still smaller so I've replaced the file.

[Entity Valkyrie 2]

What about the nonstandard guns collection? Has it been updated?

[dvgrn]

What about the nonstandard guns collection? Has it been updated?

Updated here? Yes. You can tell by the date, and the "Entity Valkyrie 2" in the comment line.

Those patterns would probably go in as a subfolder in an extended pattern collection. But they still need quite a lot of work. Most of the gun patterns don't have any comments at all. At the very least there should be a link to the post where they were copied from.

[Entity Valkyrie 2]

It is in your email.

[dvgrn]

What about the nonstandard guns collection? Has it been updated?

Updated here? Yes. You can tell by the date, and the "Entity Valkyrie 2" in the comment line.

It is in your email.

Check the link, please. Nobody seems to have downloaded the file yet, so I don't see how you could tell if something has been left out. The last time I checked, everything you sent me is in there.

[Entity Valkyrie 2]

The P360 25P3H1V0.1 gun is left out.

[dvgrn]

The P360 25P3H1V0.1 gun is left out.

I just went and re-downloaded the 24 February ZIP file in the linked post, and it definitely has the P360 25P3H1V0.1 gun in it. There was a brief time yesterday after my "check the link" post when the 17 February ZIP file was still available without that file, though, so maybe that's what happened. These negotiations get confusing very quickly.

Can you explain in a little more detail why you can't upload attachments of this size yourself? The Attachments tab at the bottom of the edit page shouldn't give you any trouble up to 1-megabyte files, if I remember right.

[Ch91]

After contemplating ideas for broadening the audience for Conway's Game of Life discoveries, I'm thinking a good place to start is by extending Golly's online Very Large Patterns collection, and then doing a much better job of advertising it.
(...)

I noticed the following patterns don't yet seem to be present, and I think they'd be worth adding.

Parallel HBK
Slavic
Tetris Processor https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/ques ... 673#142673
Programmable 8-bit computer https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2561
Dave's Hashlife-friendly versions of the Demonoid and Orthogonoid
p1 megacell
Pianola breeders

Are there any others that might be worth adding?

[Entity Valkyrie 2]

The P360 25P3H1V0.1 gun is left out.

I just went and re-downloaded the 24 February ZIP file in the linked post, and it definitely has the P360 25P3H1V0.1 gun in it. There was a brief time yesterday after my "check the link" post when the 17 February ZIP file was still available without that file, though, so maybe that's what happened. These negotiations get confusing very quickly.

Can you explain in a little more detail why you can't upload attachments of this size yourself? The Attachments tab at the bottom of the edit page shouldn't give you any trouble up to 1-megabyte files, if I remember right.

I couldn't find the Attachments bar.

[dvgrn]

I couldn't find the Attachments bar.

Can you now find the attachments tab, or is it missing?

[Entity Valkyrie 2]

I suddenly noticed that it was there. I stupidly thought that the bar had only "options". EDIT: It was attached, however then when I sent it, the attachment disapeared.

[dvgrn]

I suddenly noticed that it was there. I stupidly thought that the bar had only "options". EDIT: It was attached, however then when I sent it, the attachment disapeared.

That sounds like what will happen if your attachment is too big. How many bytes is your ZIP file? Try just attaching a ZIP of just whatever files you changed this time, and if it doesn't work, post how many bytes _that_ file was, and I'll do a little experimenting to see what's going on.

[Entity Valkyrie 2]

It is 536 KB. I just forgot to click "Place inline".

guns-nonstandard-24Feb2020.zip

(535.8 KiB) Downloaded 192 times

[gameoflifemaniac]

How does the Tetris processor work?

[wildmyron]

How does the Tetris processor work?

Have you read the original answer and associated posts at the original Codegolf challenge? If yes then perhaps you can elaborate on what you don't understand and perhaps someone (not me) can explain that aspect.