Golly suggestions

Gustone · Post by **Gustone** » May 11th, 2019, 4:01 pm

fluffykitty wrote:| is already used for alternating rules though (at least in LifeViewer)

huh.
I think "&" isn't used for anything.

Moosey · Post by **Moosey** » May 11th, 2019, 4:11 pm

Gustone wrote:
fluffykitty wrote:| is already used for alternating rules though (at least in LifeViewer)
oh fjord.
Lets separate the rules with "&". Im pretty sure it is not used for anything.

Not that I know of

Gustone · Post by **Gustone** » May 28th, 2019, 12:41 pm

Now i want to run caterpillar an caterloopillars smoothly on hashlife

Moosey · Post by **Moosey** » May 28th, 2019, 12:47 pm

Gustone wrote:Now i want to run caterpillar an caterloopillars smoothly on hashlife

But then it wouldn’t be hashlife!

Gustone · Post by **Gustone** » May 28th, 2019, 12:48 pm

Moosey wrote:
Gustone wrote:Now i want to run caterpillar an caterloopillars smoothly on hashlife
But then it wouldn’t be hashlife!

I want it on hashlife

Post by **dvgrn** » May 28th, 2019, 1:33 pm

Gustone wrote:I want it on hashlife

What is stopping you exactly? Go to Golly's Help > Online Archives > Very Large Patterns and click on "Caterpillar". It's an .mc.gz file -- compressed macrocell -- so the algorithm will be HashLife by default.

If you want to see the Caterpillar running a lot faster, click on View > Show Timeline and run for 270 ticks.

If you do File > Save Pattern after that, you'll save an entire period of the Caterpillar, and you can hit the Play button (right-pointing triangle) to replay it smoothly at the default step size, which is controlled by the small slider toward the left side of the timeline bar. Make sure you have enough disk space, though -- the saved timeline pattern is almost 220MB.

The same idea should work for the various caterloopillars. If you have enough memory, disk space, and patience, you can do timelines of multiple cycles of these macro-spaceships if you want -- 540 ticks for the Caterpillar, etc. I always found it a little annoying that the timeline automatically runs backwards when it gets to the end, so multiple cycles will give you a little more time. 810 ticks of the Caterpillar takes a little more than 470MB on disk, not 220*3 = 660MB, because hashtiles get re-used whenever they re-occur in a different phase.

Speculative Golly suggestion: add settings to Golly timelines, which can be stored in comment lines like #CXOFFSET {X} and #CYOFFSET {Y}, to specify how far the display should jump with each cycle of a timeline. Then, instead of always running the timeline forwards and then backwards to the beginning, have an option to keep running the timeline forwards (or backwards) and incorporating that periodic jump at the right times to keep the simulation smooth.

This would provide a display option along the lines of TRACK in LifeViewer, or more accurately TRACKLOOP -- so that in many cases, very large slow patterns could still be inspected while they were running at a reasonable speed.

Gustone · Post by **Gustone** » May 31st, 2019, 9:17 am

dvgrn wrote:run for 270 ticks

OH THE LAG
Seriously! It gets slower and slower each frame!
And it cant get past 49 for some reason.

Post by **dvgrn** » May 31st, 2019, 9:43 am

Gustone wrote:
dvgrn wrote:run for 270 ticks
OH THE LAG
Seriously! It gets slower and slower each frame!
And it cant get past 49 for some reason.

Well, your mileage may vary, of course. My system only takes a couple of minutes to get through 270 frames, and ends up wanting to use 3.2GB. It's only after you've pre-calculated all the frames that you'll be able to see a smooth animation.

Have you set Golly's File > Preferences > Control > Maximum memory to something over three gigabytes (if you have it available)? It does seem possible you'd have a tough time building a Caterpillar timeline with Golly's default setting of 500 megabytes.

AforAmpere · Post by **AforAmpere** » May 31st, 2019, 10:49 am

At about 3.4 GB or RAM on it, it seems to run at about 3-4 fps. I tried to let it go higher, but around about 3.5 GB, Golly said it was out of memory, and crashed.

Gustone · Post by **Gustone** » May 31st, 2019, 1:16 pm

I have 4gb ram
20gb free on one disk
93gb free on another
as for now

Post by **dvgrn** » May 31st, 2019, 2:02 pm

Gustone wrote:I have 4gb ram
20gb free on one disk
93gb free on another
as for now

What is your maximum memory setting in Golly? If it's set at 500MB, try setting it to 3.5GB. Going too close to your total memory does cause trouble sometimes, but it's worth an experiment.

GUYTU6J · Post by **GUYTU6J** » June 22nd, 2019, 12:47 pm

A humble suggestion: we can use this as the infinite-binary-ruler-generator pattern