Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Recursive Game of Life

oimo.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 123 posts

Re: Recursive Game of Life

#61

Post by danbruc »

I can wrap my head around zooming in - conceptually you run any life simulation you want, i.e. a base level game of life, and then recursively decompose each cell into the 2²² cells of a OTCA metapixel.

Zooming out I find much harder to make sense of. What does it look like if you zoom out infinitely often? Is there some limit? If you take an empty universe with all cells dead there seems to be nothing at first, but at closer inspection there is of course still a lot of stuff going on in all the dead metapixels making up the empty universe. After zooming in a couple of times it would be hard to tell that zooming out a bit would leave you with an empty universe. And it would not have to be an empty universe, it could be anything.

Re: Recursive Game of Life

#62

Post by graderjs »

That is so cool! This person really is a freak, in good way. They also created their own physics engine, which was featured here a while ago: https://github.com/saharan/OimoPhysics

But it would be cool if we could change the GoL parameters and see how that affects the infinite fractal recursion!

Re: Recursive Game of Life

#63

Post by phoe-krk »

danbruc wrote: post #61

I can wrap my head around zooming in - conceptually you run any life simulation you want, i.e. a base level game of life, and then recursively decompose each cell into the 2²² cells of a OTCA metapixel. Zooming out I find much harder to make sense of. What does it look like if you zoom out infinitely often? Is there some limit? If you take an empty universe with all cells dead there seems to be nothing at first, but…

> What does it look like if you zoom out infinitely often?

Make a sharp backwards roll of your mouse wheel and see for yourself - it'll turn on the autopilot mode.

Re: Recursive Game of Life

#64

Post by rwmj »

ranting-moth wrote: post #47

Doesn't work in Firefox Uncaught Object { message: "assertion error", stack: "C@ https://oimo.io/works/life/main.js:31:459\nze@https://oimo.i... , g: {…}, value: "assertion error" } main.js:37:66

It just says "Loading" for me with FF 106.

Re: Recursive Game of Life

#66

Post by danbruc »

thunderrabbit wrote: post #46
brunorsini wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love that too, only wish auto-scrolling speed could be adjusted (would like it to be slower).

For me there's a horizontal slider in bottom middle of the screen which controls the auto-scrolling speed.

I did not realize that. If you are not auto-zooming it seems to just control the simulation speed but while auto-zooming it effects the speed of the zoom. That probably makes sense at a deep level because as you zoom in and out the simulation speed has to be adjusted to make the new level run at the same speed as the old one.

Re: Recursive Game of Life

#67

Post by consumer451 »

phoe-krk wrote: post #63
danbruc wrote: post #61

I can wrap my head around zooming in - conceptually you run any life simulation you want, i.e. a base level game of life, and then recursively decompose each cell into the 2²² cells of a OTCA metapixel. Zooming out I find much harder to make sense of. What does it look like if you zoom out infinitely often? Is there some limit? If you take an empty universe with all cells dead there seems to be nothing at first, but…

> What does it look like if you zoom out infinitely often? Make a sharp backwards roll of your mouse wheel and see for yourself - it'll turn on the autopilot mode.

I am really enjoying this full screen with auto-zoom-out at the slowest speed setting. If the controls faded like media player controls do in full screen, I would be perfectly satisfied.

This inspired a bit of awe in me, especially after I learned from another comment here that each game is unique.

edit: Oh wow, of course it's last month's Bubbles creator.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33566924

Re: Recursive Game of Life

#68

Post by danbruc »

phoe-krk wrote: post #63
danbruc wrote: post #61

I can wrap my head around zooming in - conceptually you run any life simulation you want, i.e. a base level game of life, and then recursively decompose each cell into the 2²² cells of a OTCA metapixel. Zooming out I find much harder to make sense of. What does it look like if you zoom out infinitely often? Is there some limit? If you take an empty universe with all cells dead there seems to be nothing at first, but…

> What does it look like if you zoom out infinitely often? Make a sharp backwards roll of your mouse wheel and see for yourself - it'll turn on the autopilot mode.

Already tried that, does not zoom quickly enough to reach infinity before I have to go to bed.

Re: Recursive Game of Life

#69

Post by phoe-krk »

danbruc wrote: post #68
phoe-krk wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What does it look like if you zoom out infinitely often? Make a sharp backwards roll of your mouse wheel and see for yourself - it'll turn on the autopilot mode.

Already tried that, does not zoom quickly enough to reach infinity before I have to go to bed.

I don't think you need to reach infinity to realize it's OTCA metapixels all the way down and OTCA metapixels all the way up. In a way, it just loops forever.

Re: Recursive Game of Life

#70

Post by Zeyka »

traes wrote: post #56
strenholme wrote: post #40

While an interesting effect, this recursive nature of this game can not be seen unless one has a mouse scroll wheel. I think it would be good to allow zoom in/zoom out to be done a different way (such as page up/page down or +/-). Not everyone has a mouse scroll wheel.

While this may not work for tablets (?), the vast majority of laptops have a setting called two-finger scrolling that lets you use two fingers on a trackpad to give scroll wheel inputs.

It works perfectly fine on mobile and it feels really smooth :)
Post reply on HN