Show HN: My weekend project, a graphics/cellular automata playground | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: My weekend project, a graphics/cellular automata playground

demoseen.com

56 pointsdaeken16 comments

This is a quick, dirty hack I wrote up using JS. It's based on Langton's ant, but adds a lot of new, fun stuff. You can do all sorts of interesting things with it -- a command reference is included. The "docs" were written in 5 minutes, so feel free to ask for clarification. Enjoy!

One of my favorites: http://demoseen.com/langton.html#+..............................

This is awesome. I'd love to add color generation options.

Here's my favorite so far:

http://demoseen.com/langton.html#*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/....

[EDIT: and its cousin: http://demoseen.com/langton.html#*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/....+-+... ]

I've been thinking about color stuff, but just can't come up with how to really do it. However, I think sub-45-degree turning is gonna happen soon. Probably 15-degree to start, and see what can happen there. 45 degree turns do provide some fun stuff, though...

Edit: Just made a small change that will make things look prettier, though. If you have the command string XYZW, the command string XYZWXYZW is 100% equivalent, except for the shading (due to the cell values looping around). So when you put in a command string, it's automagickly extended to > 64 bytes now, guaranteeing smooth shading.

Perhaps a given automaton could be told to open a bucket of paint and then have that paint expend itself over time (drop in color intensity, increase in opacity, or whatever).

Oh nice, I quite like that. I'll try it out. Thanks!

Btw, just implemented yet another new feature: the '@' command is an ant bomb. If there are multiple ants in play, @ kills the one that triggers it. That lets you fork without completely annihilating your system.

A color increase/decrease command, which cycles through a palette?

Alright, both of these are in. $ increments the color, ^ decrements it. In addition, = now causes the child ant to have its color incremented, and < causes the child color to be decremented. Technicolor craziness.

Edit: Really don't like the color stuff. I've left in $ and ^, but I've turned it off for forks. It just looks like random nonsense, sadly.

Awesome! I love the ease in which you can send other people your creations using the urls. I wonder if anyone would be up for developing this same type of project, but centered around Conway's Game of Life instead (one of my favorite cellular automata).

My favorite: http://demoseen.com/langton.html#*/*/.......*/*/*/*/............

Nice. I like the "organic" feel of the images you get.

http://demoseen.com/langton.html#+/.<..<....++..........

Tiny circles: http://demoseen.com/langton.html#/<./<...

I love it! How about the addition of a stop button?

Done, thanks!

ideas:

allow number suffixes to mean a repeat of the previous token.

.6 would be equal to ......

also, allow the ant bomb with a number to only allow that many ants. @4 means kill this ant if there are more than four.

maybe allow subgrouping?

[+........]12 means 12 of these?

random numbers: .{13,24} means between 13 and 24 of .?

awesome, I made a virus: http://demoseen.com/langton.html#+>$!-=

It's beautiful.

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