multilife

a program to place multiple conway's-game-of-life-like cellular automata in a single ecosystem that can all interact with eachother

run the program and it outputs output.mp4 file with the video replay of the simulation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpPAf_UoUCc

license

the programs code is licensed under the MIT license

all videos created using this software are licensed under CC BY 4.0

credits

• Michaelangel007's nanofont3x4
• FFmpeg for video encoding
• cellular automaton rules from various authors found from conwaylife.com and hatsyas catagolue

technical overview of engine

specie = singular for species species = plural for species

• each cell can belong to a specie each with its own B/S rule
• the world is a wrapped torodial grid
• at every step, the engine computes the next state in parallel with multiple workers

neighbor counting

for each cell:

• count total neighbors in totalNeighbors
• count per-species neighbors in specieNeighbors

survival

if the current cell is alive:

• check its own specie survival condition using totalNeighbors
• if it fails, the cell dies and can later be replaced by a birth of a different specie

birth / takeover

each specie independently checks if it can birth at the current cells location using its own neighbor count from specieNeighbors[specie.Id]

a specie is added as a candidate for birth if the current cell meets its birth condition AND:

• the cell is alive but the specie is different from the current cells specie OR
• the cell is dead

canCompete := shouldBirth &&
	((cellIsAlive && differentSpecie) ||
		(!cellIsAlive))

since species can replace other species cells, survival doesnt make a cell invincible

handling conflicts

• each candidates weight = number of neighbors of its own specie (specieNeighbors[candidateId])
• the candidate with the highest weight wins
• if multiple candidates tie for the highest weight, there is no change to the cell

summary

• each cell counts neighbors per specie and total neighbors
• a cell can survive according to its species survival rule
• species can attempt to birth into empty cells or replace other species
• multiple candidates resolve with neighbor-weight; ties keep the cell unchanged
• the simulation supports multi-threading for faster computation