The CA community annoys me

[LumpsOfMuck]

Ever since I discovered MCell I have enjoyed messing around with CA rules and seeing what
patterns they produced. In fact I have spent over 100 hours in MCell coming up with
different rules since it is so easy to create them in that program. I came to this community
hoping to share these rules and my experiences creating them but I ran into the following
problems:

1. Overall the community is just too small. Many of my posts here are almost completely
ignored only getting a few replies.


5. People don't care enough about different CA rules. Even though there is a sub forum about
non life CA rules the topics there for the most part only cover the most basic CA rules.
None of the topics deal with the more advanced rules that can be created in MCell. When you
actually enter the topics all people do is post patterns they found in the rule. There is no
discussion about modifying the rule and seeing what happens to certain patterns.

Sorry about this but I just had to get this off my chest. It is just so annoying to spend so
much time in MCell and then not have anyone to talk to about it with.

1: Couldn't agree more. I put up something and it's like 99% of the time no one shows they care. I know not everyone has to be interested in everything I say, but not everyone should ignore everything someone says or posts either. For me, I feel proud when I find something new and cool, and why not, I often have to give significant amounts of time to make or find those things. But then, what usually happens is no one notices or they do but don't care, and, pardon my egotism and self-centeredness, but I find that rather irritating. I mean, the only reason I post stuff is so people will see it and maybe use it. If no one even so much as looks at it, is it really even worth it to post... I'm pretty sure those of you who don't get many replies get my frustration. Well, enough complaining, that won't get anything done. However, I will say that we all should try to improve a little. Maybe just say something to one person's post every day, just to make them feel wanted, and let's see what happens.

5. I will have to say, I've played around with a lot of rules and many are not appealing, due to them being either too explosive or too stable for even moderately interesting discoveries to be found in any reasonable amount of time. I will also say that some of the stuff people have constructed in life is just astonishing, and there are more astonishing things in life than any other rule I know. However, this is almost completely because life gets like 99% of the attention, so of course it will have the most discoveries. I personally think, when all's said and done, life probably isn't SO much more interesting than those other rules so as to warrant the extraordinary amount of attention it gets relative to other rules like dry life, or high life, or to unnamed, (at least to my knowledge) rules like B23/S8, B238/S38, B3678/S1258, and B3/S02456. In my opinion, all of these deserve an amount of attention comparable to the amount life gets, but that isn't what happens. IDK, I guess all anyone can do is try and experiment on their own or with their friends and hope that others follow suit.

[137ben]

1: Couldn't agree more. I put up something and it's like 99% of the time no one shows they care. I know not everyone has to be interested in everything I say, but not everyone should ignore everything someone says or posts either. For me, I feel proud when I find something new and cool, and why not, I often have to give significant amounts of time to make or find those things. But then, what usually happens is no one notices or they do but don't care, and, pardon my egotism and self-centeredness, but I find that rather insulting. I mean if no one cares what I do, why the heck am I even on here... I'm pretty sure those of you who don't get many replies get my frustration. Well, enough complaining, that won't get anything done. However, I will say that we all should try to improve a little. Maybe just say something to one person's post every day, just to make them feel wanted, and let's see what happens.

I think a lot of the problem is just that the community is small, and so it is unlikely anything will get many replies.

[LumpsOfMuck]

1: Couldn't agree more. I put up something and it's like 99% of the time no one shows they care. I know not everyone has to be interested in everything I say, but not everyone should ignore everything someone says or posts either. For me, I feel proud when I find something new and cool, and why not, I often have to give significant amounts of time to make or find those things. But then, what usually happens is no one notices or they do but don't care, and, pardon my egotism and self-centeredness, but I find that rather insulting. I mean if no one cares what I do, why the heck am I even on here... I'm pretty sure those of you who don't get many replies get my frustration. Well, enough complaining, that won't get anything done. However, I will say that we all should try to improve a little. Maybe just say something to one person's post every day, just to make them feel wanted, and let's see what happens.

I think a lot of the problem is just that the community is small, and so it is unlikely anything will get many replies.

Ok. But there is still a little room for improvement for some members, (including myself). But you do have a point nontheless.

[chineseman]

Mcell is more convenient.Although golly can support all types of CA,but we don't need them.

[137ben]

Mcell is more convenient.Although golly can support all types of CA,but we don't need them.

What's more convenient about it? And why should we limit ourselves to CA that mcell can represent? Or to naive step algorithms rather than hashing? Or a finite bounding grid?
Also, there's a script in the forum for converting MCell rules to golly rules.

[Hektor]

Mcell is more convenient.Although golly can support all types of CA,but we don't need them.

What do you mean with "we don't need them" ?

What's more convenient about it? And why should we limit ourselves to CA that mcell can represent? Or to naive step algorithms rather than hashing? Or a finite bounding grid?
Also, there's a script in the forum for converting MCell rules to golly rules.

Golly also supports external python and perl scripting, which is very useful IMO.

[DocA]

I've been using MCell for longer than Golly, and I find that it's more useful for an artistic approach to making CA patterns. The line tool has a built-in fractions function, large squares and circles can be rapidly produced to explore larger simple inputs. The rule input interface is far, far more accessible than Golly's, and rule exploration is far simpler in MCell.

[137ben]

I'd be in favor of adding better drawing tools in golly. Particularly diagonal lines. Although, it should be noted that rectangles can already be drawn easily in golly with the invert script or by changing "random fill" to 100%. What is it that you find easier about mcell's rule system? No one has answered that question. I expect Andrew/Tom would make interface changes if they knew what you guys wanted.

[DocA]

I'd be in favor of adding better drawing tools in golly. Particularly diagonal lines. Although, it should be noted that rectangles can already be drawn easily in golly with the invert script or by changing "random fill" to 100%. What is it that you find easier about mcell's rule system? No one has answered that question. I expect Andrew/Tom would make interface changes if they knew what you guys wanted.

Well, okay. Golly is missing built-in Weighted Life, the ability to easily add gradients to colors based on their state #, the ability to easily store colors, an always finite grid disconnected from the ruleset, the aforementioned lack of a line or circle or fill tool (for those like me not clever enough to routinely use the fill/scripts), the ability to change gridline colors and the ability to make image files of the finite grid at any time.

I don't know about how you implement rulesets in Golly, but the visual and logical system in MCell is phenomenal for rulesets. For weighted life, each of the 9 weights can be modified at any time parallel to the birth/survival rules. This means Von Neumann neighborhoods, hexagonal neighborhoods, linear and particle neighborhoods, Moore, Double Von Neumann (Weight 2 for N,E,W,S and weight 1 for NW,NE,SW,SE), exotic neighborhoods (Weight 2 N,E,W,S, weight 3 NW,NE,SW,SE), half-dimension neighborhoods (N,S weight 2, NE,NW,SE,SW 1, E,W 0).

I don't even know how to get Golly to do Weighted Life, so MCell wins.

I will grant that Golly is very, very good at what it does, and that MCell is very old and rickety. MCell just has some very intuitive additions that I think Golly is missing.

[EricG]

Here's the very simple python script I posted for converting weighted life rules ( for example, "NW4,NN1,NE0,WW1, ME0,EE4,SW0,SS4, SE1,HI0,RS1,RS6,RS8,RB5,RB6") into Golly ruletrees:

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=933

If, after reading Golly's help pages, you're still having trouble using scripts with Golly, don't hesitate to ask for help. It would be a shame if interested CA enthusiasts aren't comfortable using scripts. (I'm just about ready to post a new collection of scripts for Golly, and I'm hoping at least one other person will enjoy them.)

[137ben]

It should probably be noted that you don't need to understand how scripts work (let alone how to write them) to use them effectively. I am still not comfortable writing golly scripts, but use them a lot. A big plus for golly, as I see it, is that absent features can be added as scripts. Once you save the script, it really works just like a built in feature. Mcell doesn't have that advantage, so it can't make up for what it doesn't have.

[bprentice]

I would like to introduce those of you who have enjoyed using MCell to a CA simulator called Square Cell. This simulator was designed as a replacement for MCell, is written in Java and can be installed and run on any computer which implements a Java run time environment.

An archive, "Square Cell.zip", containing the Java source code and the executable file SquareCell.jar is here:

http://bprentice.webenet.net/Square%20Cell/

This directory also contains three other files. The first, "Java Square Cell.html" briefly tells how to use the simulator.

The other two files are the archives Knight Ship Guns.zip and Patterns.zip which are discussed elsewhere on this forum and contain pattern collections which can be run on Square Cell.

An applet which can be run on any Java enabled browser is here:

http://bprentice.webenet.net/Square%20C ... pplet.html

An archive containing Square Cell and several other Java simulators together with a a large collection of patterns is here:

http://bprentice.webenet.net/Java%20Square%20Cell/

Of particular interest are two CA simulators called Hexagonal Cell and Triangular Cell.

Brian Prentice