The author has a YouTube channel and speaks at length about cellular automata and other artificial intelligence. It's a good time! (https://www.youtube.com/@EmergentGarden)

Subscribed. YouTube never shows me videos I actually want to watch so I forget about promising channels unfortunately.

This would make for an awesome screen saver.

Now I’m itching to muck with cellular automata. Anyone have any recommendations for engines (any language)?

putchar

Ahahaha. I mean with all the typical optimizations handled. Quadtree and such.

You don’t really need an engine. You just need the right data structure to represent a cell and simple methods.

What you may be asking about is visualization. In this case, just use simple drawning functions in a graphics library that will draw a pixel to a screen canvas at the cells coordinates. Update on each tick.

I'd use js/typescript/webpack if I wanted to set up something quick

the best program I'm aware of is called Golly

I agree Golly is the best for specifically cellular automata, but I came across this program called Visions of Chaos and I was shocked to see it essentially supports any and all types of simulation/generative/procedural/AI solvers and renderers OOTB (it downloads them as needed the first time you use each one) and it seems to have new updates almost every time I open the software.

Seriously amazing for not only fun but easy access to preconfigured solvers if you want to quickly test out ideas, plus it’s packed with presets too. I’ve racked up many hours using it since finding out about it a few months ago, highly recommend.

Their website lists all the features right on the homepage: https://www.softology.pro/voc.htm

It even has all the latest in ML, I use it to launch Stable Diffusion and CLIP all the time.

Man, you weren't kidding, thanks for posting this.

Reminds me of a Cellular Automata style simulation program I wrote years ago https://youtu.be/RLTL3r55CP0

This one seems quite a bit more sophisticated but the dynamics are very similar.

If you ever get the chance I recommend writing your own life simulator program, it’s great fun! It also demonstrates how easy it is to produce complex behavior from relatively simple instructions

Not sure what's up, I just see a blank blue screen and nothing ever happens. Chrome 111.0.5563.147.

Update: don't use a VPN.

I use a VPN (Mullvad) and confirm that it works (MS Edge on Windows 11).

Neat. I thought it was a peculiar visualization of Conway's Life at first, but it's got a more complex set of rules. The presentation and controls are pretty good. I'd like to be able to see which organism type is which, and especially be able to zoom in on any new ones.

It's been running for me for a few minutes at top speed and it hasn't gone over 8 celled organisms, but it had an explosion at some point where it went from just a few species to over 200. I wonder if the algorithm could be memoized like in hashlife.