Cellular Life Studio
A sandbox for cellular automata. Each generation, every cell looks at its eight neighbours: dead cells come alive on a birth count, live cells stay alive on a survival count. Simple rules, surprising results.
Draw living cells, pick a birth/survival rule and watch generations unfold.
FreeOn this device
A repeat is reported only when the exact same grid appeared within the last 100 generations — it says nothing certain about the far future. Random starts are just random; none is claimed to be special.
Controls
- Drag on the grid to draw; starting on a live cell erases instead. Play, Pause and Step run the world; Speed sets generations per second.
- With the keyboard, Tab to the grid: arrows move the cursor, Space toggles a cell, R reads the cursor's row and C its column, P stamps the chosen pattern.
- Tick the birth and survival counts to make any rule; Edges switches between dead edges and wrapping around. Experiments load a ready-made question.
The rules
- Neighbours are the eight surrounding cells. With dead edges, cells beyond the border count as dead; with wrapping, the grid joins top to bottom and left to right.
- All cells update at once from the previous generation, never one after another.
- Rules are chosen from neighbour counts 0 to 8 only. B3/S23 — born on 3, survive on 2 or 3 — is Conway's classic Game of Life.
Scoring, saving and limits
There is no score. The status line counts live cells and reports a repeat when the exact same grid appeared within the last 100 generations.
The grid, rule and edge setting are kept on this device. Patterns can be exported and imported as small files; anything larger than 100 × 70 is refused.
A repeat found within 100 generations is reported as such — it is not a proof about what happens afterwards. Library patterns are mathematical coordinates; random starts are not claimed to be unique or special.
Questions
- Why does my glider disappear at the edge?
- With dead edges it runs into the border and breaks up. Switch Edges to wrap around and it will cross to the other side.
- What does a period mean?
- That the grid has returned to a state it had that many generations ago, so it will cycle from now on — under the same rule and edges.
- Can a rule make empty space come alive?
- Yes — ticking birth on 0 does exactly that. It is allowed; it just behaves very differently.