Developed in 1970 by mathematician John Conway, the Game of Life is a cellular automaton set on a square grid of tiles that is guided by a simple set of rules:
A tile is either alive or dead.
A living cell will survive to the next generation if and only if it has 2 or 3 (out of 8 possible) living neighbors.
A dead cell will come to life in the next generation if and only if it has 2 living neighbors.
With just those simple rules the Game of Life can be carried out procedurally from any starting arrangement of living and dead tiles. This rich game has since sparked the cellular automata genre as a whole and has served as both a recreational and a research activity for many mathematicians or simple hobbyists for over half a century.
I decided to make my own Life simulation in s&box and add various editor features as I came up with them. In its current form, this has become a nice little editor with a simple set of useful tools that allows the user to play around with and explore Conway's Game of Life to make discoveries on their own.
I also included a template loading feature which showcases common patterns and explains the terminology associated with them. My hope is that this will serve as a nice introduction to the automaton for those who are new to it. Below is an example of what someone could create without manually drawing, only using the editor tools: templates, copy/paste, and clipboard rotating/reflecting.Give it a go at Ode To Life on s&box.
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