List of Life-like rules

The following is a list of Life-like rules. A more up-to-date and complete list can be found on Catagolue.

Rulestring	Name	Description
B0123478/S01234678	AntiLife	The black/white reversal of Conway's Game of Life.
B0123478/S34678	InverseLife	A rule by Jason Rampe, showing similar oscillators and gliders to Conway's Game of Life. The black/white reversal of B3678/S23.
B01245/S01245	B01245/S01245	A strobing rule witch make spearheaders from chaotic oscillating boundaries.
B01356/S012345	Wickstretcher And The Parasites	An explosive strobing rule which forms different wickstretchers of different speeds and sizes, mostly accompanied by a "parasite" or patterns that stick to them and change the size of the wicks.
B014/S2	Oils
B017/S01	B017/S01
B026/S1	B026/S1
B028/S0124	Invertamaze	A strobing rule which makes mazes that invert themselves each generation (SEIZURE WARNING).
B08/S4	Neon Blobs	A strobing rule in which patterns become neon-like explosive patterns.
B1/S012345678	H-trees	An exploding rule where H-shaped branches grow from pattern borders.
B1/S014567	Fuzz	An exploding rule in which solid patterns appear.
B1/S1	Gnarl	A simple exploding rule by Kellie Evans that forms complex patterns from even a single live cell.
B1/S134567	Snakeskin	A rule in which patterns explode and form snake-like patterns.
B12678/S15678	Solid islands grow amongst static	A rule in which patterns grow exponentially and form solid patters inside static-like patterns.
B1357/S1357	Replicator	A rule in which every pattern is a replicator.
B1357/S02468	Fredkin	A rule in which, like Replicator, every pattern is a replicator. Also known as "Replicator 2".
B1358/S0247	Feux	An explosive rule where patterns turn into replicators and flash in and out of existence.
B2/S	Seeds	An exploding rule by Brian Silverman in which every cell dies in every generation. It has many simple orthogonal spaceships, though it is in general difficult to create patterns that don't explode.
B2/S0	Live Free or Die	An exploding rule in which only cells with no neighbors survive. It has many spaceships, puffers, and oscillators, some of infinitely extensible size and period.
B2/S13	B2/S13	An exploding rule, one of the few B2 life-like rules that has a replicator.
B2/S2345	B2/S2345	An exploding rule, with still lifes that may form indestructible barriers to growth, which can be used as casing for single-use wires, out of which logic gates can be constructed.
B2/S23456	B2/S23456	similar to B2/S2345
B2/S2345678	B2/S2345678	similar to B2/S2345
B234/S	Serviettes	An exploding rule in which every cell dies in every generation (like Seeds). This rule is of interest because of the fabric-like beauty of the patterns that it produces. Also known as "Persian Rug".
B25/S4	B25/S4	An exploding rule, it has a one-dimensional asymmetric replicator.
B25678/S5678	Iceballs	Small masses of solid living cells flicker in and out of existence. Some reach a critical mass and begin to slowly grow. Also known as "Ice nine".
B3/S012345678	Life without death	An expanding rule that produces complex flakes, featuring dense wickstretchers named "ladder". Also known as "Flakes" or "Inkspot".
B3/S023	DotLife	An exploding rule closely related to Conway's Life. The B-heptomino is a common infinite growth pattern in this rule, though it can be stabilized into a spaceship.
B3/S0248	Star Trek
B3/S12	Flock	Patterns tend to quickly settle into dominoes, duoplets and period 2 oscillators. There is a common period 14 shuttle oscillator involving the pre-beehive.
B3/S1234	Mazectric	An expanding rule that crystalizes to form maze-like designs that tend to be straighter (ie. have longer "halls") than the standard maze rule.
B3/S12345	Maze	An expanding rule that crystalizes to form maze-like designs.
B3/S123678	Magnezones	An explosive rule that is liquid with four types of crystals appearing in the liquid.
B3/S1237	SnowLife
B3/S124	Corrosion of Conformity	A rule similar to Mazectric but without S3. A slow burn from almost any starting pattern, resulting in a rusting away of the local continuum.
B3/S128	EightFlock
B3/S13	LowLife
B3/S2	B3/S2	This rule has 6 small still lifes, the tub, the hive, the aircraft carrier, the loaf, the mango, and the pond. However, there are no still lifes with more than 8 and less than 20 cells.[citation needed] There are also a few common oscillators, including the blinker and the toad, and lots of rare ones.
B3/S23	Conway's Life	A chaotic rule that is by far the most well-known and well-studied. It exhibits highly complex behavior.
B3/S2378	B3/S2378
B3/S238	EightLife	Also known as "Pulsar Life".
B3/S245678	Shoots and Roots	Shoots are slow growing, well-ordered patterns, while Roots grow faster than shoots, and explosive as they grow.
B3/S4567	Lifeguard 2
B3/S45678	Coral	An exploding rule in which patterns grow slowly and form coral-like textures.
B34/S34	3-4 Life	An exploding rule that was initially thought to be a stable alternative to Conway's Life, until computer simulation found that most patterns tend to explode. It has many small oscillators and simple period 3 orthogonal and diagonal spaceships.
B34/S35	Dance
B34/S456	Bacteria
B345/S0456	Never happy	An explosive rule where patterns slowly form diamond-like shapes and slowly explode.
B345/S2	Blinkers
B345/S4567	Assimilation	A very stable rule that forms permanent diamond-shaped patterns with partially filled interiors. Like in 2×2, patterns made of blocks will permanently remain made of blocks.
B345/S5	Long Life	A stable rule that gets its name from the fact that it has many simple extremely high period oscillators.
B34568/S15678	Spiral and polygonal growth	A rule with "plow" structures that move along an edge of a polygon, increasing its size (turning corners and thickening it as they go), corner-extenders that create these in their wake, and nontrivial interactions based on these (such as a 16-cell methuselah that takes 12127116559 generations to become a period-2 oscillator)
B3457/S4568	Gems	An exploding rule with many smaller high-period oscillators and a c/5648 spaceship.
B34578/S456	Gems Minor	An exploding rule with many smaller high-period oscillators and a c/2068 spaceship.
B35/S23	Grounded Life	A stable rule "one outer-totalistic condition away from Life", where neither of the standard spaceships works, and the most common spaceship is an orthogonal 2c/5 spaceship called "Glider 3736".
B35/S234578	Land Rush	Expanding chaos organizing itself into plowed fields.
B35/S236	B35/S236	An exploding rule explored by Dean Hickerson and David Eppstein.
B3567/S15678	Bugs
B35678/S34567	Cheerios	An explosive rule where patterns explode while "cheerios" form in the chaotic mess.
B35678/S4678	Holstein	A self-complementary rule. Black regions are surrounded by froth and tend to eventually collapse starting from the corners, but can be stabilized in various ways by oscillators on their boundaries. c/3, c/4, c/5 and c/7 orthogonal spaceships are known.
B35678/S5678	Diamoeba	A chaotic pattern that forms large diamonds with chaotically oscillating boundaries. Known to have quadratically-growing patterns. Like in 2×2, patterns made of blocks will permanently remain made of blocks.
B357/S1358	Amoeba	A chaotic rule that is well balanced between life and death; it forms patterns with chaotic interiors and wildly moving boundaries.
B357/S238	Pseudo Life	A chaotic rule with evolution that resembles Conway's Life, but few patterns from Life work in this rule because the glider is unstable.
B3578/S24678	Geology	A very well-balanced and chaotic rule that forms large "continents" of live cells surrounded by chaos at a roughly 50% density, but they eventually erode away into smaller "islands". It is symmetric under on-off reversal.
B36/S12	HighFlock
B36/S125	2×2	A chaotic rule with many simple still lifes, oscillators and spaceships. Its name comes from the fact that it sends patterns made up of 2 × 2 blocks to patterns made up of 2 × 2 blocks.
B36/S128	IronFlock
B36/S23	HighLife	A chaotic rule very similar to Conway's Life that is of interest because it has a simple replicator.
B36/S234578	Land Rush 2	An exploding rule that got confused with Land Rush, likely due to a typo. It does contain a period 4 orthogonal c/2 ship.
B36/S235	Blinker Life	An exploding rule where the T-tetromino is a blinker puffer, appropriate because it evolves into traffic light in Life, also made of blinkers. Also known as Virus.
B36/S238	IronLife
B36/S245	sqrt replicator rule	Name comes from a dirty orthogonal replicator.
B367/S125678	Slow Blob
B367/S23	DrighLife	A mix between DryLife and HighLife
B3678/S1258	2×2 2
B3678/S135678	Castles	A rule where patterns almost explode into castle-like stable patterns.
B3678/S23	B3678/S23	Black/white reversal of InverseLife.
B3678/S235678	Stains	A stable rule in which most patterns tend to "fill in" bounded regions. Most nearby rules (such as coagulations) tend to explode.
B3678/S34678	Day & Night	A stable rule that is symmetric under on-off reversal. Many patterns exhibiting highly complex behavior have been found for it.
B368/S12578	B368/S12578	An exploding 2x2-like rule with a small 4c/13o replicator, of which guns and W110 unit cells had been constructed
B368/S128	LowFlockDeath
B368/S236	Life SkyHigh	A rule that is similar to HighLife but adds a B8 and S6 to the rulestring, hence, the name "SkyHigh".
B368/S238	LowDeath	HighLife's replicator works in this rule, albeit with a different evolution sequence due to the result of B38/S23's "pedestrian" effect.
B368/S245	Morley	A rule in which random patterns tend to stabilize extremely quickly. Has a very common slow-moving spaceship and slow-moving puffer. Also known as "Move".
B37/S012345678	DryLife without Death
B37/S12	DryFlock
B37/S1234	Mazectric with Mice	Some "mice" run back and forth in the halls of the maze.
B37/S12345	Maze with Mice	Similar to B37/S1234, some "mice" run back and forth in the continually-stretching halls of the maze.
B37/S23	DryLife	An exploding rule closely related to Conway's Life, named after the fact that standard spaceships bigger than the glider do not function in the rule. Has a small 9c/28 orthogonal puffer based on the R-pentomino, which resembles the switch engine in the possibility of combining several to form a spaceship.
B378/S012345678	Plow World	An explosive rule, some of the patterns can turn into wickstretchers.
B378/S235678	Coagulations	An exploding rule in which patterns tend to expand forever, producing a thick "goo" as it does so. Suprisingly, Coagulations actually has one less birth condition than Stains.
B38/S012345678	Pedestrian Life without Death
B38/S12	Pedestrian Flock	A mix between Pedestrian Life and Flock
B38/S128	HoneyFlock
B38/S23	Pedestrian Life	A close Life variant with a number of distinctive natural growth patterns and (5,2)c/190 oblique spaceships.
B38/S238	HoneyLife
B45/S12345	Electrified Maze
B45/S1235	Oscillators Rule	Random patterns shrink to tiny oscillators, with periods anywhere between 1 ("still lifes") and 16. Larger periods are rare.
B45678/S2345	Walled cities	A stable rule by David Macfarlane that forms centers of pseudo-random activity separated by walls.
B45678/S5678	Majority
B4678/S35678	Vote 4/5	A modification of the standard Gérard Vichniac voting rule, also known as "Anneal", used as a model for majority voting.
B48/S234	Lifeguard 1
B56/S14568	Rings 'n' Slugs	A rule in which patterns stabilize into "Rings" and "Slugs".
B5678/S45678	Vote	Standard Gérard Vichniac voting rule, also known as "Majority", used as a model for majority voting.

See also

• List of isotropic non-totalistic rules
• List of strobing rules
• List of Generations rules

External links

• Cellular Automata rules lexicon
• Interesting Rules at Fano Experimental Web Server (archived copy)
• University of Groningen Bernoulli Institute for Mathematics, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence: Cellular Automata Lab - Game of Life