cellular automata

Conway's game of life, was devised by John Conway in 1970 and is a way of modelling very simple cell population dynamics. The game takes place on a two dimensional board containing a grid of orthogonal cells. The game is technically a zero player game in that the initial setup of the game dictates the eventual evolution of the board.

The rules of the game (taken from wikipedia) are as follows.

1. Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies, as if by underpopulation.
2. Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives on to the next generation.
3. Any live cell with more than three live neighbours dies, as if by overpopulation.
4. Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours becomes a live cell, as if by reproduction.

For every 'tick' of the game board the rules are evaluated and each cell is kept alive, given life or killed. Through these simple rules a great deal of complexity can be generated.

After looking at Conway's game of life I have been looking at other forms of cellular automata. This lead me to discover Langton's ant, which is a different kind of cellular automata where an agent (namely an ant) is used to turn the squares on or off as it travels around a grid.

The rules of Langton's ant are quite simple. The ant simply follows two rules as it moves around the grid.

Something I've been writing long hand for a number of years is wrap around increments. This is essentially adding to a value that has an upper limit, and wrapping back to 0 when that max value is reached. This can be done with an if statement.