Barrel

The barrel of a gun or a rake is a path along which the output spaceships travel. The term is most commonly used in the context of the number of barrels a gun or rake possesses, which is the number of distinct spaceship streams emitted by said gun or rake. For example, the AK-94, B-52 bomber and Simkin glider gun are said to be double-barrelled because they produce two streams of gliders. The period-256 glider gun and Gunstar and its variants all have four barrels, and P94S contains 12 barrels.

Given a gun with multiple barrels, one can eliminate barrels by simply placing an eater in the path of the unwanted glider streams. Unwanted barrels of a rake can often be eliminated by adding sparky spaceships that move with the same (simplified) speed and delete the output of the rake.

x = 42, y = 42, rule = B3/S23 20b2o$20b2o$6b2o$5b2o$7bo$3bo$2b2o18b2o$2bobo17bo$22bo$23bo9$32bo2bo$ 33b3o$2o38b2o$2o38b2o$6b3o$6bo2bo9$18bo$19bo$19bo17bobo$18b2o18b2o$38b o$34bo$35b2o$34b2o$20b2o$20b2o! #C [[ THUMBSIZE 2 THEME 6 GRID GRIDMAJOR 0 SUPPRESS THUMBLAUNCH ]] #C [[ ZOOM 8 HEIGHT 460 GPS 20 THEME BOOK STARTFROM 156 ]]

Period-156 glider gun with 8 barrels highlighted with an envelope. (click above to open LifeViewer) RLE: here Plaintext: here Catagolue: here