Bounding diamond
The bounding diamond of a pattern is the smallest diamond that fits the entire object. The diamond is diagonal lines meeting up with a side length of 1 or 2 depending on the size. It is useful for seeing how close a glider can be to an object without colliding.
The block, tub, pond and generation 5 of the T-tetromino represent the edges of the bounding diamond of width 2, 3, 4 and 5 respectively. The "octagon" phase of the octagon II represent the edges of the bounding diamond of width 8.
| Edges of the bounding diamond of widths 1-10: width 1, 6, 7 and 10 edges are sparks; width 2, 3, 4, and 9 are (or evolve into) still lifes; width 5 and 8 are (or evolve into) oscillators (click above to open LifeViewer) RLE: here Plaintext: here |
Bounding diamonds can be used to determine whether a glider is guaranteed to escape or not. LifeViewer's "kill gliders" option kills gliders that are outside the bounding diamond of the rest of the pattern. Bounding box cannot be used, as an XWSS can catch up to it; this was a bug in prior versions of LifeViewer.