looping modified gfind

[John]

I'm trying to loop through some (a lot of) different gfind versions for different hexagonal rules, and was hoping that if I start small (with say l80), I could get through a lot of rules and find some easy gliders quickly. It's quick for some rules, but B245/S12H is taking forever. It seemed like a good idea at first, because I tried it with a small batch of rules like B2/S1H, B2/S2H and some others, and I was looping through different /l and /o values (I used a batch file), and it was doing great. But now I made a ton of gfind.exe files for different rules (I wrote a python script that loops through rules with EricG.py and inserts the ruleTab lines into C files - then compiled them all with a batch file), and I'm realizing that I can't just quickly get through them with all the o/2-19 and l/80-100 like I did for the much smaller batch. I mean it's running, but B245/S12/o2/a/l80 is pretty slow going, and I imagine others will be too, and o2/l80 is just the beginning. I could just move the slow rules out of the way as I find them, or work with smaller batches. I was hoping for something more automated maybe. Or I'm overlooking something. Does anyone have any advice?

[John]

I decided to use python and the subprocess and threading modules to start and stop them, also start at l45 stepping up by 5. it might be too low, but doesn't cost anything. I hope later I'll go back and spend more time on the c/2 or c/3 or something. I'm logging where I quit my searches (negative results). I'm trying to avoid too much effort on the first pass though.

I'm wondering how I should share my results. I started on a site similar to Eppstein's database because i like it and it gives me an opportunity to try out json. Or I could just have a zipped collection of glider .rle, but I think that would lose information and not be as searchable.

[John]

http://zxcvly.com/ShapesByRule.html

under construction is an understatement - besides Shapes by Rule, the other pages don't work. pics are missing, etc., I'll probably rethink some/most of this. I'm not really satisfied with how I'm "naming" the gliders either, but it works for now.

still...lots of gliders in these hexagonal rules. I try to just have the smallest from each period in each rule, or if a slightly larger one is more versatile, I go with that. I still have a lot to add though.

I also added a few oscillators, a couple sawtooth patterns (replicators?) and some wickstretchers in there. Don't be fooled by the "guns" - I haven't found any for these gliders.