Most rules on Catagolue follow a predictable system for state colors in images: alive is black, dead is the same as the background color, Generations patterns fade from green to the background color, and BSFKL has destructive states set to what looks to be one of these greens. However, there are some rulespaces (genext, deficient, custom ruletables) which handle states differently, and as a result these colourings do not apply to all states.
I've looked through Catagolue's code on gitlab to see if I could find any way in which these colors were either specified or generated, but couldn't find anything of use, and have pinged Adam on discord a few times over the years regarding the matter but haven't received an answer to my memory. As such, how these colors are generated still appear to be a mystery.
Here are some examples of colors which are used across these rulespaces:
- 3-state custom rules seem to be pretty much identical to how BSFKL handles colors - state 1 is the usual 2-state black, and state 2 is green: https://catagolue.hatsya.com/census/x3x ... st/iC1/xp2
- Deficient rule state counts likely depend on the number of birth transitions they have as to have states which track used transitions. The colors used for pattern images for non-state-1 cells may be random as I don't know if colors are intentionally assigned to different states. The following page shows black, red, green and blue cells in use, as well as slightly, almost unnoticably paler versions of the black and red cells: https://catagolue.hatsya.com/census/b2s ... D2_+1/xp13
It may be possible to create a custom rule which contains natural patterns which use 256 (or possibly more!) states, although I'd prefer to hold off on making such a thing since there's probably an easier way to get an answer for how these colors get generated.
How do Catagolue colors work?
Re: How do Catagolue colors work?
I've managed to forcibly enumerate all of the used colors via use of a custom rule containing four natural photons with 64 states each. The resulting colors for states 1 to 256 can be found in the following post: https://www.conwaylife.com/forums/viewt ... 50#p140452
Help wanted: How can we accurately notate any 1D replicator?