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Golly 3.2b1

Posted: May 15th, 2018, 6:54 pm
by Andrew
Golly 3.2b1 is now available for testing:

http://www.trevorrow.com/golly/Golly-3.2b1-Mac.dmg (Mac OS 10.6+)
http://www.trevorrow.com/golly/golly-3. ... -64bit.zip (Windows XP+, 64-bit)
http://www.trevorrow.com/golly/golly-3. ... -32bit.zip (Windows XP+, 32-bit)
http://www.trevorrow.com/golly/golly-3. ... bit.tar.gz (Linux, 64-bit)
http://www.trevorrow.com/golly/golly-3. ... bit.tar.gz (Linux, 32-bit)
http://www.trevorrow.com/golly/golly-3.2b1-src.tar.gz (source code)

Main changes to 3.1:

- Three-dimensional CA can be explored using a new script called 3D.lua. I've created a separate thread in the Scripts forum for all discussion about 3D.lua, so please post your suggestions, bug reports, patterns etc in that thread.

- The Larger than Life algorithm now supports circular neighborhoods. See Help > Algorithms > Larger than Life for details.

- HashLife and the other hash-based algorithms are faster and more responsive.

As always, see Help > Changes for the full list of changes.

Re: Golly 3.2b1

Posted: May 15th, 2018, 10:02 pm
by KittyTac
Well, mine didn't go in, but hey, 3D CA! Gotta play around with that! Thank you!

Re: Golly 3.2b1

Posted: May 16th, 2018, 9:16 am
by gameoflifemaniac
When I run 3D.lua, how to change the layer I'm drawing on?

Re: Golly 3.2b1

Posted: May 16th, 2018, 9:23 am
by Andrew
gameoflifemaniac wrote:When I run 3D.lua, how to change the layer I'm drawing on?
From 3D.lua's help:

To move the active plane to a different position, shift-click anywhere in the active plane and drag the mouse. Or you can hit the "," or "." keys. Hit shift-A to change the active plane's orientation.

Re: Golly 3.2b1

Posted: May 17th, 2018, 12:23 am
by wildmyron
Andrew:

This is an old bug, pretty minor and easy to avoid, but seeing as it's coming up to release of 3.2 I thought I'd mention it now.

Tested on Golly 3.1 and Golly 3.2b1 on Win7 x64. My shortcut for the "Set Rule" dialogue is Shift-R. I can't remember if this is the default.

With the cursor set to "Draw", press Shift-R to open the "Set Rule" dialogue. Shift temporarily changes the cursor (to "Pick" in this case) but when the dialogue opens it switches to a pointer. Click "OK" to close the dialogue.

The cursor will now be set to "Pick", rather than returning to "Draw".

Press Shift briefly - or any other key - and the cursor mode will return to "Draw".

--

Would you care to expand on the improvements to HashLife and RuleLoader? In particular what should we expect in terms of performance improvements and are there any types of patterns where the improvements are likely to be most effective?

Also, are there any plans to incorporate the work Adam and Tom have been doing on CA algorithm performance in to Golly? It seems like lifelib in particular is a promising alternative for high performance CA evolution.

Re: Golly 3.2b1

Posted: May 17th, 2018, 1:00 am
by Andrew
wildmyron wrote:With the cursor set to "Draw", press Shift-R to open the "Set Rule" dialogue. Shift temporarily changes the cursor (to "Pick" in this case) but when the dialogue opens it switches to a pointer. Click "OK" to close the dialogue.

The cursor will now be set to "Pick", rather than returning to "Draw".
I can't reproduce the problem on any of my Mac/Win/Linux systems. That pretty much rules out any hope of me finding a solution. Maybe there is some Windows keyboard setting you can change to fix this?
Would you care to expand on the improvements to HashLife and RuleLoader?
Tom did all those changes so best to ask him (golly-test might be a better place -- not sure how often he checks these forums).
Also, are there any plans to incorporate the work Adam and Tom have been doing on CA algorithm performance in to Golly?
Again, best to ask Tom.

Re: Golly 3.2b1

Posted: May 17th, 2018, 1:08 am
by wildmyron
Andrew wrote:
wildmyron wrote:With the cursor set to "Draw", press Shift-R to open the "Set Rule" dialogue. Shift temporarily changes the cursor (to "Pick" in this case) but when the dialogue opens it switches to a pointer. Click "OK" to close the dialogue.

The cursor will now be set to "Pick", rather than returning to "Draw".
I can't reproduce the problem on any of my Mac/Win/Linux systems. That pretty much rules out any hope of me finding a solution. Maybe there is some Windows keyboard setting you can change to fix this?
OK, thank you for looking in to it.

Re: Golly 3.2b1

Posted: May 17th, 2018, 5:57 am
by rowett
wildmyron wrote:With the cursor set to "Draw", press Shift-R to open the "Set Rule" dialogue. Shift temporarily changes the cursor (to "Pick" in this case) but when the dialogue opens it switches to a pointer. Click "OK" to close the dialogue.

The cursor will now be set to "Pick", rather than returning to "Draw".
I can reproduce this on my Windows 10 system with Golly 3.2b1. I had to add Key Combination: "Shift-R", Action: Set Rule... in File > Preferences... > Keyboard.

I'll take a look at the code.

Re: Golly 3.2b1

Posted: May 22nd, 2018, 7:00 pm
by Sokwe

Re: Golly 3.2b1

Posted: May 22nd, 2018, 9:54 pm
by dvgrn
Sokwe wrote:This is missing the recent (minor) pattern collection update.
Yup, sorry, I didn't manage a checkin in time for the beta build. It's definitely on on my official to-do list for the final 3.2 release.

Re: Golly 3.2b1

Posted: May 24th, 2018, 8:50 pm
by rokicki
Andrew wrote:
Would you care to expand on the improvements to HashLife and RuleLoader?
Tom did all those changes so best to ask him (golly-test might be a better place -- not sure how often he checks these forums).
The hashing algorithms should be somewhat faster (varies). I changed the hashtable code to use power of two hashing and a different hash function for speed (division/modulo is still slow on modern machines) and made a number of additional changes. The improvement is probably between 1.3X and 1.5X so it will probably not be obvious.

More mportantly (to me anyway) I improved the responsiveness of the algorithms especially to things like + and - (speed up and slow down). I did this using several tricks. For instance, I found that doing a GC before rehashing and before changing the increment could usually speed things up, sometimes by a lot.

So there should be fewer times you have to sit and wait while the increment changes.

I also added some random information to the hash info status; not sure if any of it will be of interest to anyone but me.
Andrew wrote:
Also, are there any plans to incorporate the work Adam and Tom have been doing on CA algorithm performance in to Golly?
Again, best to ask Tom.
Oh, how did this get out? At the moment it's unlikely that lifelib algorithms will show up in Golly in the near future, but long-term anything could happen. Among other reasons, they require recompilation for different rules. Nonetheless I am very excited by the performance I am seeing in the various lifelib algorithms and hope to incorporate some of the improvements, if not the actual code, at some point. If you are interested in very high performance life algorithms and don't need real-time display, I encourage you to look at the lifelib code.

Re: Golly 3.2b1

Posted: May 24th, 2018, 11:48 pm
by wildmyron
Thank you Tom, for providing details of the HashLife improvements. The improved responsiveness is great, and quite obviously effective when you push the step too high and then try to reel it back in again compared to Golly 3.1.
rokicki wrote:
Andrew wrote:
wildmyron wrote:Also, are there any plans to incorporate the work Adam and Tom have been doing on CA algorithm performance in to Golly?
Again, best to ask Tom.
Oh, how did this get out?
Sorry, that's entirely my fault. In my defense, It did appear to be publicly available.

Re: Golly 3.2b1

Posted: May 25th, 2018, 3:07 am
by rokicki
wildmyron wrote:Sorry, that's entirely my fault. In my defense, It did appear to be publicly available.
It is public, just didn't think anyone would notice it; no worries.

Re: Golly 3.2b1

Posted: May 26th, 2018, 10:17 am
by muzik
Are there any plans to support range-extended outer-totalistic rulespaces?
calcyman wrote:
muzik wrote: Seems like a valid next step. The other two main ones I can think of would be B0 non-totalistic and LTL Generations.
In terms of further rule families, the next one I intend to implement is outer-totalistic rules up to range 5.

Re: Golly 3.2b1

Posted: May 31st, 2018, 3:29 pm
by dani
Golly freezes when attempting to load this ruletable (change the 6 on the line below 'XPM' to 5 to make it work)
EDIT: BE CAREFUL, AS THIS CAN LOCK UP GOLLY FOREVER IF IT'S SET TO THE DEFAULT RULE

Code: Select all

@RULE SLBeta

@TABLE

n_states:6
neighborhood:Moore
symmetries:permute

@COLORS
0 0 0 0
1 255 255 255

@ICONS
XPM
"15 60 6 1"
". c #000000"
"S c #888888"
"W c #FFFFFF"
"B c #554433"
"Y c #FFEE22"

"....BBBBBBB...."
"...BYYYYYYYB..."
"..BYYYYYYYYYB.."
".BYYBBYYYBBYYB."
"BYYBYYYYYYYBYYB"
"BYYYYYYYYYYYYYB"
"BYYY..YYY..YYYB"
"BYYYSSYYYSSYYYB"
"BYYYYYYYYYYYYYB"
"BYY.........YYB"
".BYY.WWWWW.YYB."
".BYYY.....YYYB."
"..BYYYYYYYYYB.."
"...BYYYYYYYB..."
"....BBBBBBB...."

"....BBBBBBB...."
"...BYYYYYYYB..."
"..BYYYYYYYYYB.."
".BYYYYYYYYYYYB."
"BYYYYYYYYYYYYYB"
"BYYY..YYY..YYYB"
"BYY.YY.Y.YY.YYB"
"BYYYYYYYYYYYYYB"
"BY...........YB"
"BY.WWWWWWWWW.YB"
".BY.WWWWWWW.YB."
".BYY.WWWWW.YYB."
"..BYY.....YYB.."
"...BYYYYYYYB..."
"....BBBBBBB...."

"....BBBBBBB...."
"...BYYYYYYYB..."
"..BYYYYYYYYYB.."
".BYYYYYYYYYYYB."
"BYYBBBYYYBBBYYB"
"BYBWWWBYBWWWBYB"
"BYBWBWBYBWBWBYB"
"BYBWBWBYBWBWBYB"
"BYYYYYYYYYYYYYB"
"BYYY.......YYYB"
".BY.YYYYYYY.YB."
".BYYYYYYYYYYYB."
"..BYYYYYYYYYB.."
"...BYYYYYYYB..."
"....BBBBBBB...."

"....BBBBBBB...."
"...BYYYYYYYB..."
"..BYYYYYYYYYB.."
".BYBBBYYYBBBYB."
"BYBWWWBYBWWWBYB"
"BYBWBWBYBWBWBYB"
"BYBWBWBYBWBWBYB"
"BYYBYYYYYYYBYYB"
"BYYYYYBBBYYYYYB"
"BYYYYYWWWYYYYYB"
".BYYYY...YYYYB."
".BYYYY...YYYYB."
"..BYYY...YYYB.."
"...BYYYYYYYB..."
"....BBBBBBB...."

"....BBBBBBB...."
"...BYYYYYYYB..."
"..BYYYYYYYYYB.."
".BYYYYYYYYYYYB."
"BYYYBYYYYYBYYYB"
"BYYYYBYYYBYYYYB"
"BYYYYYYYYYYYYYB"
"BYYYBBYYYBBYYYB"
"BYYYYBYYYBYYYYB"
"BYYYYYYYYYYYYYB"
".BYYYBBBBBYYYB."
".BYYBWWWWWBYYB."
"..BYBBBBBBBYB.."
"...BYYYYYYYB..."
"....BBBBBBB...."

Re: Golly 3.2b1

Posted: May 31st, 2018, 4:13 pm
by Redstoneboi
are you using mobile or pc?
my mobile golly locks up forever in a black screen if i load an invalid rule.
the annoying thing is instead of throwing a “too few strings” error, it crashes forever.
sometimes i make rule tables using “smart quotes” instead of "ascii quotes" and it warns me about how there are too few strings, so idk the problem

Re: Golly 3.2b1

Posted: June 4th, 2018, 8:45 pm
by Andrew
danny wrote:Golly freezes when attempting to load this ruletable ...
Fixed in the next 3.2 build -- thanks for reporting. If you're using the Android or iPad version of Golly then it might be a while before you see a fix. A new Android version will hopefully be released soon after the final 3.2 build is available from sourceforge.