LifeSim app for iPhone and iPad
Developer: Sergey Ilyevsky
First release : 21 Jul 2010
App size: 5.23 Mb
LifeSim is a simulator for Conways Game of Life on an infinite grid.
Features:
• Infinite grid: explore huge civilizations on your iphone without the limits of finite or torus grids
• Easy controls: drag to scroll, pinch to zoom, tap to toggle cells states
• Hundreds of known patterns: explore them or use them as building blocks
• Quick-start Game of Life tutorial
What is Conways Game of Life?
Game of Life is a famous model devised by John Conway in 1970.
Imagine a universe existing of square cells on an infinite flat grid. A cell can contain life or be empty.
At each game step, live cells can stay alive, die, or multiply - according to 3 simple rules:
• if a live cell had less than 2 live neighbors (at the previous state), it dies of loneliness
• if a live cell had more than 3 live neighbors, it dies of overcrowding
• if a dead cell had exactly 3 live neighbors, it comes to life
Now imagine a civilization starting from 3 cells placed in a row. What will it evolve into?
Can there be still patterns in this universe? Yes, the simplest one is 2x2 rectangle.
Is it possible to build a civilization that will move across the universe? Yes, there are such "spaceships",
and the smallest one consists of just 5 cells, so you can even try to discover it yourself.
LifeSim brings this amazing universe into your pocket. Tap on a few cells and see what they will evolve into.
Or explore hundreds of known beautiful patterns. Or try to protect a still life from a spaceship moving towards it.
More information about Game of Life can be found at LifeWiki (http://www.conwaylife.com/wiki/).
LifeSim comes with a quick-start Game of Life tutorial (tap the help button).
Latest reviews of LifeSim app for iPhone and iPad
This would be so much more if I could save my designs.
Fun to play with and to guess whatll happen next.
once you get the hang of what your doing it is pretty interesting, if there was a tutorial-type intro to the game that step by step taught you how to use it, it would be a lot more easy. beside this the app is very fluid and easy to use, also very interesting to mess with the populations that you create.
I was fascinated by John Conways Game of Life when it first appeared in Martin Gardners October, 1970, Mathematical Games column in Scientific American. In the succeeding 40 years, I have owned many personal computers, and I put a version of the game on all of them. Now Ive got LifeSim for my iPod Touch, and it id one of the best implementations of all. This is the classic version; there are no variations or extensions. The user interface is very clean and simple. It works very well. Im glad the developer concentrated on given the user control over the indefinitely large cell space, rather than wasting effort on fancy artwork. With LifeSim you can really study the endlessly fascinating Game of Life. You wont get quickly bored with this app. There is a large literature on this game. Start with Wikipedia if you new to the game.
I have yet to figure out what Im doing in this app. That said, its still pretty fun to press boxes, zoom out, and see the consequences of your actions over many generations.