ConwayLife.com

(Sorry for the late reply.) Nice. I said you probably didn't have the devotion to see it through, and you proved me wrong. I've added it to the list , as well as its system, Fireworld2, which I classified as "MID" (I may elaborate on this choice in a PM). I look forward to seeing you publish some mo...

As a young child, I once went to the Grand Exchange in Runescape and started counting up from 1, saying "1", "2", "3", and so on, expecting people to give me in-game currency in return. Nobody did. The rationale in my mind was that counting up to large numbers (I think I got into the 3-digit range) ...

The big problem with many of these kinds of problems is not so much that they can't be turned into runnable code. Often the real problem is getting a good estimate of the amount of CPU time or memory resources needed to complete the work -- and in many cases the estimate turns out to be "sometime a...

I just watched a talk by Brian Kernighan about programming language design. The main takeaway from it for me was that the ideal time to create a new DSL (Domain Specific Language) is when you keep encountering problems that, intuitively, feel like they should be one line, but are not; which, I argue...

If we're counting historical versions of software for which newer versions are still available, TR's hlife, which I believe still exists as part of Golly, is available on his site as version 0.96 . The Wayback Machine goes back to 0.8 . Are earlier versions still around anywhere? Here's one I've rea...

Happy birthday to Alexey Nigin, who only appears on these forums on his birthdays. Except he didn't appear in 2019. Will he appear this year?

The documentation on the MC format states that '.'s at the end of a row are suppressed, but doesn't say anything about '$'s at the end of a line being suppressed. It also gives "$$..*$...*$.***$$$$" as an example node, which clearly implies that they are not, and that an MC decoder can safely assum...

I just don't see any way to write a general algorithm that censuses rules that do pretty much always explode, but maybe count something different from what you'd normally count. What if you don't actually want a comprehensive census? This thread reminded me of an idea I had a while ago, and finally...

Many formats include redundant information that could ultimately be deduced from the pattern context, but that make various operations easier if they are directly available. [examples] That's a valid point (the RLE example is even used by some decoders I've written). But it raises another question:...

Why does the Macrocell format require the depth of nodes to be specified? They can be deduced by incrementing the depth of the subnodes. Ambiguity between leaf and non-leaf nodes in 3+ state rules can be resolved some other way, like prepending those lines with some specific character. I know .mc is...

Ripple carry adder (including p6-to-p3 converters feeding displays). Unblock the guns to modify the input: x = 59, y = 56, rule = Sticky 59A$33ACB24A$32A.2A.23A$33A2.24A$35A.23A$12A2.34A10.A$11AB2A.20A.2A. 5A.2A.A8.2A$12AC.A.A7.A2.3A.5A3.2A4.A.A10.A$24A.A5.4A.3A2.4A.3A8.2A$ 24A.6A2.A5.A.A3.A.A10.A$1...

An even further reduction of the AND gate: x = 9, y = 28, rule = Sticky 4A.4A$4A.4A$4A.4A$4A.4A$A7.A$2A.3A.2A$2A.3A.2A$2A.3A.2A$2A.3A.2A2$2.C 3.C$2.B3.B5$2.C$2.B9$6.C$6.B! At period 6 (the lowest period at which signals can trivially crossover) this is not an AND gate, it's an SR latch (?), as you ...

I've recently been revisiting epsrc. I may post an update to the code. Just found a new high period record based on the old one, (386,792)c/7556: #C by blah and gameoflifemaniac x = 1, y = 1, rule = MAPhQAMHAREoIgIhgCIgAAAAACAgAQBOQgAAEAEABCAAAAAgAAgIAAAAAAAQAAAQAAAAAAAAAAAAAQAAQAEABAAAA o! Soon we ...

The script seems to work, but how do you play this game? I tried different arrow combinations, but I don't see any changes on the display. You have to hold the keys down for a while, it's not very responsive. Also, the program won't register the keypress if multiple input keys are held down simulta...

I get this error: attempt to perform arithmetic on a nil value (upvalue 'height') I assume you tried to run it on an empty pattern. For me that causes the same error. You're meant to open a pattern first, then run the script. I'll change the script to display a more informative error message. Thank...

I wrote a script to simulate Rychládrát in Golly. It's significantly faster than Reasoning Realm. It doesn't let you modify the pattern while it's running, other than through the cursor keys, enter, and backspace, which are bound to Důvěřivý's inputs. Read the comment at the top of the code for inst...

x = 10, y = 10, rule = B2o/S2m34H ob2o7b$b2obo6b$2ob2o6b$2b2obo5b$2bob2o5b$3b2obo4b$3bob2o4b$3b3obo3b$6b2o3b$ 6bobo2b$6b3o2b$8b3o! This structure (and others like it) are extremely stable. I can think of some intuitive reasons for why this is so, but I haven't considered the issue carefully. The pr...

Failed attempts at finding stable reflectors: x = 117, y = 102, rule = Fireworld 2.A.A$8.AB$A7.AB$3.A2$A4.A6$16.A.A$23.AB$23.AB$16.A$19.A$16.A10$32.A. A2.A$40.AB$40.AB$34.A.A2$32.A3.A12$49.A.A4.AB$56.AB2$51.A.A9$66.A3.AB $63.A6.AB2$67.A$64.A12$82.A5.AB$88.AB2$81.A3.A11$100.A3.AB$104.AB$98. A.A10$115...

Added to the list . Here's a Lua script to load the .mem files in Golly because I didn't want to deal with getting the Python program to work. --[[ deca-asm.lua blah 2020 A script to load data into Hactar's computer's ROM. Hacked together in a few hours. ]] local g=golly() g.warn("Ensure that data t...

The algorithm at the end of your last post would trip up on /2/3 because the first character of the survival conditions is not a digit, but is the null character since the component is length 0. Omitting the `C` component should imply `C2`; after all, `C2` is just the base case for `Cn`. `C(n<2)` ma...

B0/S0/NR0 ("Everybody lives forever") Support for range 0 rules should not be required for compliance with the standard. I'd even say 'R0' should be syntactically invalid. Dimensionality: `1D`, `2D`, `3D`, etc. (default = 2D) Provisions or specifications for 1D rules should not exist. Nobody would ...

x = 12, y = 38, rule = Wilfred 12C36$2.CAB2ABAC$3.6C! This is the same mechanism as the common adjustable Wire2 gun (or at least, highly similar): x = 27, y = 6, rule = Wire2 22.CABC$21.CBCABA$26CB$26CB$21.CBCABA$22.CABC5$18.4CABC$17.4CBCABA$26CB$26CB$17.4CBCABA$18.4CABC! Poorly optimised prime num...

Bytes of long words on the PDP-11 were stored 3412 there... 2143, actually. I just tested this on an emulator: # cat end.c int main(){ long x=0x12345678; char *p=(char*)&x; printf("%x %x %x %x\n",p[0],p[1],p[2],p[3]); printf("%d %d\n",sizeof(int),sizeof(long)); return 0; } # cc end.c # ./a.out 34 1...

hkoenig wrote: ↑

October 2nd, 2020, 9:50 pm

why to never, ever trust any code that uses C bit-fields.

... Why do you never trust code that uses bitfields? I don't think I've ever heard that before.

A /2/3 variant with signal circuitry. Sounds familiar . Splitter and diode for half-sheath wire. The diode converts the signal to a photon and back. x = 40, y = 14, rule = Wilfred 10.C.C.C.C.C$C.C.C.C.2C$11.C.C.C.C.C$.C.C.C.C.C$9.C21.2C.C.C.C$11.C 15.C.C.C$9.C17.A7.C.C.C$11.C16.C.C.2C$9.C$11.C$9.C21...