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     YOU NEED A LIFE PROGRAM TO VIEW THESE PATTERNS!

Here is a list of life programs that support these patterns:
-------------------------------------------------------------------

LIFE 1.06 by Al Hensel, for PC's running MS-DOS.
http://users.vnet.net/alanh/life16.zip
As of this writing, this is still the fastest life program available
(per CPU cycle) that reads the patterns in this collection.

WLIFE, ported by Glen Summers, for PC's running MS-Windows 3.1.
http://www.gamesdomain.co.uk/directd/pc/windows/funstuff/wlife.html
A decent port of Xlife to Microsoft Windows.

WinLife by John Harper, for PC's running MS-Windows 3.1.
ftp://ftp.digital.com/pub/games/winlife.zip
Probably the best overall Windows Life program.

LifeLab 3.1 by Andrew Trevorrow, for Macs -- Mac Plus to Power Mac.
ftp://ftp.kagi.com/downloads/akt/lifelab.hqx
Very powerful.  Autodetects gliders and oscillators, has
sophisticated editing, does automated searches for new patterns.

Xlife by Jon Bennett, for X window systems under Unix.
ftp://ftp.digital.com/pub/X11-contrib/xlife.tar.Z
A classic.  Source code included.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

.LIF files are in a simple ASCII-based format that can be edited
using any text editor.  However, you still need a Life program to
enjoy the action.

If you are writing a new Life program, you may wish to refer to the
technical details of the .LIF file format found in WRITERS.DOC.

The collector who is responsible for this whole mess is Alan Hensel.
You can contact this nut at [email protected].

===================================================================

What is the meaning of LIFE?
----------------------------
LIFE is a classic computer game.  It was invented by John H. Conway
in 1970, and has entertained many hackers and wasted many years of
computer time ever since.  If you're smart and creative, it can be
very intellectually stimulating.  It's a simulation game which can
generate strange and beautiful patterns, sometimes in complex and
interesting ways.  Yet the rules of Life are delightfully simple:

- The game is played on a 2-dimensional grid.  Each square, or
    "cell", can be either "on" or "off".  
- If a cell is off and has 3 neighbors (out of 8), it will become
    alive in the next clock tick.  
- If a cell is on and has 2 or 3 neighbors, it survives; otherwise,
    it dies on the next clock tick.

For example, consider the following pattern, where '.' represents an
'off' cell and '*' represents an 'on' cell:
 .*.
 .*.
 .*.
Notice that the cells in the middle on either side are off and have
3 neighbors: they will come alive.  But the two '*' cells on the
ends each have just 1 neighbor; they will die of loneliness.

So the next generation is:
 ...
 ***
 ...


LIFE is like a box of chocolates....
------------------------------------
Since Life begins as a blank canvas, there is no end to the possible
ways to be creative with it.  Variety is the spice of Life!

It's common to start out by drawing random junk and seeing what it
turns into.  You can also draw lines, boxes, your name, etc.

Some of the patterns in the collection are like puzzles to figure
out: How do they work?  And how would anyone create such a thing?
For example: randgun, p94s, breeder?  What happens when you change
just one little cell...?  OK, that's fun for a while.  You get
familiar with the common stuff -- the stable patterns, the blinkers,
the movers and the shakers.

Then there's the engineering approach: try to invent a pattern that
does something interesting.  This is a challenge -- the Game of Life
is definitely not horseshoes or hand grenades!  Ever hear of the
Butterfly Effect?

For example, try to create one long, snaking line that remains
perfectly stable.  Along the way, you will discover rules, like the
offset-by-2 rule...  You'll know what that is when you find it.

Or you can try to create "billiard table configurations".  These are
mostly stable, with just a few cells blinking or bouncing around
inside.  Here's an example of a billiard pattern:

 **....**
 *.*..*.*
 ..*..*..
 ..*..*..
 ...**...

Other patterns involve gliders -- generating them, bouncing them
around, absorbing them, and generally using them for your general
amusement.  Gliders look like this:

 **.
 *.*
 *..

There are other moving objects ("spaceships").  In this pattern
collection, I put them in "aquariums", called "AQUAxx", where xx is
their speed.  They are so hard to create that nearly every one of
them had to be found by computer search programs.  No human could
possibly be expected to find a unique new spaceship (try it!).
Although, sometimes parts can be recognized and mixed and matched
with other parts, to make hybrid ships and other new stuff.

If enough spaceship pieces can be correlated, you can form what is
called a "grammar": the pieces are like words in a sentence, which
can only go in a certain sequence according to syntactic rules, and
can form spaceships of any length.  In the patterns in LIFEP, most
of this redundancy has been omitted and left for you to discover,
because otherwise there would be an infinite number of patterns.
Not good for hard disk space.

It's easy, though, to play with wicks.  Wicks are long stable
repetitive patterns that can "burn" at one end.  You can try to go
make them go around corners, branch out, explode a bomb...

And once you've tried all that, you can go back to the patterns in
LIFEP and gape in amazement!

You can also set up betting games.  For example, pick a gun, then
put something in its line of fire....  One of 3 things must happen:

- The gun blasts thru the pattern -- but sometimes only after a long
     struggle.  The debris sizzles out and the gun is victorious.

- The gun is lapped up by the flames.

- An "eater" pattern appears, swallowing bullets forever.

Place your bets!

This is fun with SAWTOOT4.  Another good betting game is to put a
fleet of spaceships in the path of some debris (AQUA25B is best for
this, in my opinion), and bet how many of them will survive.

By changing the rules, you can explore other universes.  You'll find
a lot of deadbeat universes at first, so let me point you to a few
good ones:

/2 - everything dies every generation...  yet you can hardly contain
      the explosion!  Try this simple pattern:

      **
      **
      
      (That's right, just a little 2x2 square.)
      Hey wait, is this art? I thought it was math. Hmm...
      
      If you want to circumnavigate the universe with a glider, this
      is the universe to do it in: Its gliders go at the "speed of
      light":

      .**.
      *..*

/234 - produces very beautiful fabric-like patterns.  Try the above
      square.

01245678/34 is an even better "artist".  Though some starting
      patterns leave the canvas blank, many others are very artsy.

12345/3 - aMAZing -- another exploding universe, but look how it
      crystallizes...  Also, try 1234 for the first half.  And try
      /37 for the last half: Rats!  If you don't like the explosion,
      try /45 for the last half.

245/368 - Things die out quickly, but there are a few neat things:

      *..
      **.       *....*
      ***       .****.

1358/357 - An attempt at the most stable "amoeba" universe.  Best
      viewed in Hi-Res mode, starting with a large pattern.  Does it
      die out, or go on forever?

125/36 - This one goes pretty well, neither dying quickly nor always
      expanding, and there are about a dozen weird naturally
      occurring repeaters.  Also, try 2-by-n boxes (thick lines),
      where n is an integer not of the form 4k-1, 2^k-2, or 2^k-3.
      Try also the slight modification 1258/36.  Suddenly change the
      rules to 4567/345.  Watch how it rots if you break the 2x2
      block symmetry.  This kind of symmetry occurs in only 32 ways.
      They are the 2^5 combinations of 3/12, 4/4, 5/3, 67/5, and 8/.
      You can also add 0, 1, or 2 to the Survival list and 6, 7, or
      8 to Birth list, with no consequence to its 2x2 block
      properties.

238/357 - Similar to the normal game, but it's still not clear
      whether there are any ever-expanding patterns, like a glider
      gun or a puffer train.  I know of only one spaceship in this
      universe, and I haven't been able to make anything out of it.

23/36 - Even more similar to the normal game, but there are a few
      interesting things about this one.  First of all, one might
      expect, naively, that adding more neighbor counts to either
      the birth or survival side of the rules would make the
      universe more excitable.  But this universe actually dies out
      more quickly than regular life.  There is one good exception:

      ***.
      ...*
      ...*
      ...*
      
      This rule has actually generated enough interest to have a 
      nickname.  It is called "HighLife".

235678/3678 - Ice crystals.  Close variations of these rules almost
      always expand forever, but this one curiously does not.

235678/378 - Close variation of the above, which forms really neat
      white coagulations as it expands forever.  Definitely view in
      high resolution.

Interestingly, the above 2 universes support the regular life
glider.

125678/367 - White coagulations that catch up with the border and
      stops it in many places.  But it does generally grow forever.

The above universe supports 125/36's glider.

45678/3 - Slowly expands forever with little tentacles.

5678/35678 - a favorite of Dean Hickerson, author of PUSHER, P94S,
      and many other great patterns.  You need to start it with a
      rather large white blob, larger than the default random-cells
      function can provide.  It forms rectangles that look pretty
      stable for a while, then, suddenly...  Note: This is another
      2x2 block universe.

Also try slight modifications of the normal rules, like 237/3 and
023/3...  2378/38, for example, looks pretty normal at first...  Or,
you can use an expanding universe to "grow" a pattern, then watch
how it decays under normal (or other) rules.  This produces some
pretty kaleidoscopic effects.  And some patterns can probably even
be used as Rorschach tests.

Or, if you're really smart and have some time on your hands, you can
ponder the more intellectual questions, like: Can a pattern in the
Life universe be built that reproduces as though it were really
alive?  (Exactly what kind of patterns can be built, anyway?  For
example, can they be Turing-complete?  The answer to this last one
is "yes".  Now find the proof.  Better yet, write a C compiler whose
target language is Life instead of Assembly!) And how is entropy in
the Life universe related to entropy in our own universe?  Can any
of the laws of thermodynamics apply to a universe that does not
observe conservation of mass and energy?

In the Life universe, is there an irresistible force?  The answer is
"no", because otherwise you could oppose two of them.  Alright, but
is there an immovable object?  That is, can you surround a cell with
some kind of "wall" such that no matter what you put outside the
wall, the state of that cell can never change?  That question
remains unanswered.

A pattern that has no predecessor ("father") is called a Garden of
Eden pattern.  What is the smallest one?  A satisfactory one is in
the collection (EDEN.LIF).  Another question: Is there a pattern
with a parent but no grandparent?  (This question is trickier than
it sounds at first.) In general, is there a pattern with an
immediate predecessor but without an infinite sequence of ancestors?
Is there a stable pattern that is its only predecessor?

What is the smallest object (measured by number of initial "on"
cells) whose population grows unboundedly?  The current record is
the switch engine (SWITCHEN.LIF) which starts with only 11 cells.
What is the smallest object that grows quadratically?  The current
record is "jaws" (JAWS.LIF) with 150 cells.

The average density that a random field will settle to, from 1/2
density, is about 1/(34.83 +/- .02), as measured by Achim
Flammenkamp.  What is the highest possible average density of a
periodic field?  It is conjectured to be 1/2, and proven to be
between 1/2 and 8/13, inclusive.  If the maximum is really more than
1/2, then the growth rate of spacefillers may not really be the max!

For each positive integer T, what's the largest possible quotient of
the population in gen T divided by the population in gen 0? (For
T=1, we can get arbitrarily close to 3, but can't reach it.  For
T=2, the upper bound again seems to be 3, but is unproven.)

How many distinct 3-glider collisions are there? 4-glider? 5?

Some yet-unfound but sought-after objects: A c/6 orthogonal
spaceship, a c/3 diagonal flipper spaceship, a c/6 knightship (2 up,
1 over in 6 generations).  An oscillator with a natural period of
19, 23, 27, 31, 33, 34, 37, 38, 39, 41, 43, 49, 51, 53, or 57.
A way to grow an infinite spiral-shaped object.  Some method
for lightspeed fuses (such as in ZIPS.LIF) to interact with other
known objects, such as glider streams.  A glider synthesis for a
Cordership, a glider synthesis for a dart (c/3), or a glider
synthesis for the smallest c/4 spaceship.

It would be interesting to find a collision of a glider with a
stable pattern that leaves the pattern displaced in a certain
direction and emits a glider back.  If a few of those were found,
then some combination of them might be put together to create a
brand new kind of spaceship -- slow, with variable speed.

That's the end of my suggestions, but by no means the end of the
possible ways to play the game.  Discover your very own "way of
Life".

- - -

More enlightenment:
-------------------
- Berlekamp, Conway, and Guy: Winning Ways (for your Mathematical
    Plays), Volume 2, (c)1982.  ISBN 0-12-091152-3.

- Dewdney, A.K.: The Armchair Universe, (c)1988.  
    ISBN 0-7167-1939-8 pbk.

- Gardner, Martin: Wheels, Life, and Other Mathematical Amusements,
    (c)1983.  ISBN 0-7167-1589-9.

- Gutowitz, Howard: Cellular Automata: Theory and Experiment, 
    (c)1991.  ISBN 0-262-57086-6.

- Poundstone, William: The Recursive Universe, (c)1985. 
    ISBN 0-688-03975-8.

- Preston, Duff: Modern Cellular Automata

- Sigmund, Karl: Games of Life

- Wolfram, Stephen: Theory and applications of cellular automata,
    (c)1986.  ISBN 9971-50-124-4 pbk.


- BYTE magazine: Sep 75, Oct 75, Dec 75, Jan 76, Dec 78, Jan 79, 
    Apr 79, Oct 80, Jul 81.

- Complex Systems: Bays, Carter: (various articles on 3-D life) 
    Apr 87, Dec 87, Dec 90, Feb 91, Oct 92.

- Recreational Computing: May/Jun 79.

- Reviews of Modern Physics, Vol. 55: Stephen Wolfram: "Statistical
    Mechanics of Cellular Automata."

- Scientific American: Oct 70, Nov 70, Jan 71, Feb 71, Mar 71, 
    Apr 71, Nov 71, Jan 72, Dec 75, Mar 84, May 85, Feb 87, Aug 88, 
    Aug 89, Sep 89, Jan 90.


- "LifeLine: A Quarterly Newsletter for Enthusiasts of John Conway's
    Game of Life", nos. 1-11, 1971-1973.
    These issues are probably still available. Write to:
    Robert Wainwright (ed)
    LifeLine
    12 Longvue Ave.
    New Rochelle, NY, 10804

    
- On the Internet, there is a newsgroup called comp.ai.alife, and
    another called comp.theory.cell-automata.  Neither deal directly
    with Conway's Game of Life, but with related topics.

    Some World Wide Web sites:
    http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~callahan/lifepage.html
    http://math.wisc.edu/~griffeat/sink.html
    http://www.yahoo.com/Science/Artificial_Life/Cellular_Automata/


------------------------- DISCLAIMER -----------------------------

CONWAY'S GAME OF LIFE DOES NOT DISCRIMINATE ON THE BASIS OF GENDER,
RACE, CREED, NATIONALITY, OR BELLY-BUTTON TYPE.  THE GAME OF LIFE IS
ENVIRONMENTALLY SAFE.  LIFE PATTERNS ARE 100% RECYCLABLE.

DO NOT BE INTIMIDATED BY THESE PATTERNS!  THEY ARE THE BEST OF THE
BEST, AND YOU CAN FIND JOY IN LIFE WITHOUT MATCHING THEIR QUALITY.
IF, HOWEVER, YOU ARE SO INCLINED, HAVE FUN, BUT BE FOREWARNED THAT
IT MAY TAKE MANY HOURS AND SOME KIND OF GENIUS/NUT.

----------------------------- EOD --------------------------------

Thanx go out to:
----------------
John Conway, the British mathematician who invented the game;
Dean Hickerson, who not only helped me build this awesome pattern
collection, but also created many of the patterns;
Jon C.R. Bennett and his henchmen at Carnegie-Mellon University;
Other pattern authors (certified geniuses/nuts): Bill Gosper, Dave
Buckingham, Mark Niemec, Hartmut Holzwart, David Bell, Rich
Schroeppel, Tim Coe, Dieter Leithner, Achim Flammenkamp, et al.;
And thanks also to everyone else who has contributed along the way.

- - -

Well, enjoy!
In fact, have the time of your Life!

Merrily, merrily,
Merrily, merrily,...