life: Conway's Game of Life
In caspr: Cellular Automata for Spatial Pressure in R

Description Usage Format Details Author(s) References See Also

Model implementation for Conway's Game of Life.

1 2	l <- init_landscape(c("1","0"), c(0.35,0.65), 150,150) run <- ca(l, life)

List of 7
 $ name    : chr "Random model"
 $ ref     : logi NA
 $ states  : chr [1:2] "1" "0"
 $ cols    : chr [1:2] "black" "white"
 $ interact: num [1:3, 1:3] 1 4 7 2 NA 8 3 6 9
 $ parms   :List of 2
  ..$ B: num 3
  ..$ S: num [1:2] 2 3
 $ update  :function (x_old, parms)  
  ..- attr(*, "srcref")=Class 'srcref'  atomic [1:8] 68 16 79 1 16 1 68 79
  .. .. ..- attr(*, "srcfile")=Classes 'srcfilecopy', 'srcfile' <environment: 0x1e770c28> 
 - attr(*, "class")= chr "ca_model"

The Game of Life, also known simply as Life, is a cellular automaton devised by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970.

The "game" is a zero-player game, meaning that its evolution is determined by its initial state, requiring no further input. One interacts with the Game of Life by creating an initial configuration and observing how it evolves or, for advanced players, by creating patterns with particular properties.

Rules

The universe of the Game of Life is an infinite two-dimensional orthogonal grid of square cells, each of which is in one of two possible states, alive or dead. Every cell interacts with its eight neighbours, which are the cells that are horizontally, vertically, or diagonally adjacent. At each step in time, the following transitions occur:

Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies, as if caused by under-population.
Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives on to the next generation.
Any live cell with more than three live neighbours dies, as if by overcrowding.
Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours becomes a live cell, as if by reproduction.

The initial pattern constitutes the seed of the system. The first generation is created by applying the above rules simultaneously to every cell in the seed - births and deaths occur simultaneously, and the discrete moment at which this happens is sometimes called a tick (in other words, each generation is a pure function of the preceding one). The rules continue to be applied repeatedly to create further generations.

Source: Wikipedia

John H. Conway

Gardner, Martin (October 1970). Mathematical Games - The fantastic combinations of John Conway's new solitaire game "life". Scientific American 223. pp. 120<e2><80><93>123. ISBN 0-89454-001-7.

Other models: forestgap; grazing; livestock; musselbed; predprey