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Automata: Like the Game of Life, but with violence

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Re: Automata: Like the Game of Life, but with violence

#41

Post by jones1618 »

fishtastic wrote: post #18

This game is quite different from Conway's Game of Life because it's not deterministic. During a turn, cells will rely on Math.random to find whether to move or divide; the direction that the cell move into is also randomized.

I agree, you can call it cellular automata if you want but it is false advertising to draw any comparison to Conway's Life. Still, it is fun an interesting but I would have found it more compelling if it didn't have a random component. That's part of the magic of Conway's life that complex results arise out of simple, deterministic rules.

FYI: There have been many competitive versions of Life written over the years. Here's one: (Life As War)[http://www.ctrl-alt-dev.nl/Projects/LifeAsWar/LifeAsWar.html]

Re: Automata: Like the Game of Life, but with violence

#44

Post by jerf »

jones1618 wrote: post #41
fishtastic wrote: post #18

This game is quite different from Conway's Game of Life because it's not deterministic. During a turn, cells will rely on Math.random to find whether to move or divide; the direction that the cell move into is also randomized.

I agree, you can call it cellular automata if you want but it is false advertising to draw any comparison to Conway's Life. Still, it is fun an interesting but I would have found it more compelling if it didn't have a random component. That's part of the magic of Conway's life that complex results arise out of simple, deterministic rules. FYI: There have been many competitive versions of Life written over the years.…

"There have been many competitive versions of Life written over the years."

Mistaking "Conway's Game of Life" for "Cellular Automata in general" can produce sub-optimal results. The same thing that makes Life so interesting is that from its simple rules, extremely surprisingly things result. In some sense it is in the class of maximally interesting "suprisingness" as it is Turing-complete. But this same surprisingness and the wolly, humanly-unpredictable way it manifests make it almost entirely useless for game playing.

The general idea of cellular automata can be turned into game form, but you're better off defining your own rulesets, which can produce things like http://chir.ag/stuff/sand/. I also remember playing a game that actually resembles the linked page, but where each player moved a mouse cursor around, the cells tried to follow each corresponding player's mouse cursor, and the various blobs would eat each other. Probably one of the most clear examples of a game I god good at (relative to my opponents) and couldn't even begin to verbalize my strategy, even though I had one.

Re: Automata: Like the Game of Life, but with violence

#45

Post by rz2k »

toxik wrote: post #19

There is something wrong with the game, the sum of the number of cells of each color is not constant. Also it for some reason got almost impossible to paint the board one color; beginning was easy enough. A splash was enough. Somehow the "end-game" is nearly impossible to complete. The very frustrating input method does not help the least. Otherwise, nice idea!

You're right that there seem to be interaction rules that are not stated in the tips. If you play a long game, then new pixels added later in the game are wiped out easily.

Having recently done some agent-based modeling work which is related to automata (even though in this case non-deterministic), I wanted to try out how few pixels I could add from the pseudo god mode to turn the tide in different situations. And, as you noted, late in a single game, established colors have some sort of implicit advantage with much higher numbers, regardless of how many new pixels you add.

I also agree with you that the interface adds to the frustration. It takes a long time to place pixels, when I imagine the interesting part for most people is the result of different placements, not the challenge of getting the pixels into place.

Re: Automata: Like the Game of Life, but with violence

#47

Post by dragontamer »

infinity0 wrote: post #39
sargun wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming the RNG is a deterministic random number generator, then that should make the entire game deterministic? Given independent runs, the decisions that each cell takes should occur in order, and therefore achieve the same result.

You don't know what the starting internal state of the RNG is, so no you can't predict it. The starting internal state being secret is what gives PRGs their security.

Crypto PRNGs are secure as long as their internal state is secret.

Normal RNGs are not however. A common RNG under Unix used to cycle between even / odd every other number.

Re: Automata: Like the Game of Life, but with violence

#48

Post by kolev »

eru wrote: post #43
pervycreeper wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's used for a website, it's redundant. If not, it's inaccurate.

So it's the same as www in front?

I disagree. "www" (just like ".com") denotes a URL. Something.anything doesn't look like an address unless you put "http://" in front, which is too technical for most people. I think "www" and ".com" are here to stay.
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