Yup, just looking at that lead Herschel up at the top, getting reset by a loaf one time and a glider the next, is enough to give the impression that stranger and more wonderful things will follow. And then they do!codeholic wrote:Overall, it seems that the monster is going to be the most alien creature I've seen so far in Conway's Game of Life.
I was happy with one prime number in the 31c/240 spaceship project, but (23,5)/79 has three. I might possibly have a shot at understanding how to do the synchronization and matching-up, based on recent experience with 31c/240... but thankfully that was a lot simpler -- each forerake and backrake glider in the same phase, etc. So I might need an explanation using very short words.
It is indeed: this impressive creature will be the first non-half-baked knightship, you might say. The HBK designs took advantage of a lucky low-level reaction that made the construction enormously easier. But they're one-of-a-kind -- we'll have a very hard time build anything else like them, unless we find some other object or constellation that moves when a glider hits it (and emits a same-direction glider).simsim314 wrote:As the currently existing knightships are moving very slowly, and current caterpillars designs are not so "knightship" friendly (the raising helix is usually "edgy" - and works only with orthogonal ships), in this sense biggiemac design is real break-through.
You're doing great so far (I guess the words are short enough)... but some kind of diagram with labels and arrows and circled structures would be a wonderful addition.biggiemac wrote:If you can give me advice as to how to illustrate this in LifeHistory that would be fantastic, as I get the feeling that my explanations thus far are not in satisfyingly clear language..
Attached is one way to use LifeHistory states 3 through 5 to annotate large patterns. It's not the only way -- you can draw freehand in state 4 instead, if you want -- but it works, more or less. There are some pre-made labels that can be cut and pasted... Golly isn't really designed for this kind of annotation/drawing task, so for example you have to be careful not to draw over any state-1 cells with state 4, or you'll ruin your pattern. Marked state-1 cells would have to be converted to state 3 or 5 somehow.
The vaguely nice thing about state 4 is that you can still run the pattern and see what happens -- the labels don't get in the way of the action. They don't move, so they quickly become irrelevant, of course, and in a pattern like this the universe quickly gets smeared with state-2 history cells. But if you've marked the labeled object with state 3 or 5, then at least you have the afterimage of the object as a reference.
[Annotations in Conway's Life have been a work in progress for decades -- despite several attempts, there's never been an annotation format supported by a large enough fraction of CA software to really catch on. Maybe someday we'll be able to define labels that move at (23,5)/79, and stay the same size no matter how you zoom.]
EDIT: Meant to ask: if each construction triangle is 50% bigger than the last one, and there are 8 *WSSes left to build, does that mean the knightship's final height will be around 2500+665(1+1.5+1.5^2+1.5^3+...+1.5^9) = ~ 750k? (I'm guessing 77,777.) Or are there subsidiary problems to solve that will take more space?