My Cellular Automata

These videos show 2 different rule-sets running on my 3-D cellular automaton based on cubic closed-packed array geometry. The vertical dimension (perpendicular to your display screen) is represented by color-coding (like looking down into a square aquarium from above).

Specifications

• Each cell has 2 states. One state is assigned the value "1", indicates being alive, and has color-coding (corresponding to the cell's vertical spatial coordinate, which is perpendicular to your screen). The other state is assigned value "0", indicates a dead cell, and is shown as black. "Dead" cells are empty and transparent, i.e., empty space. Living cells are opaque in that they hide all cells behind them along the line of sight.

• The vertical dimension is represented by color-coding (bright green signifies a vertical height closer to the viewer, while violet is furthest away). A colored cell blocks the view of other cells directly behind them along the line-of-sight. The resulting image is analogous to a color-coded contour map.

• The geometry of cell array is 3-dimensional Cubic Close-Packed, with 12 identical adjacent (touching) neighbors. All cells are equivalent with regards to geometry and rule application.

• The cell array is the above example is 70 x 70 x 70 cells. The size of the array is limited only by memory and execution speed. Larger arrays naturally update more slowly.

• Edges are wrapped in all 3 dimensions, corresponding to an overall 4-dimensional hyper-torus universe (I think).

• The initial "seed" population was a random distributions of several thousand "1" values (alive) sprinkled throughout a universe originally filled with "0" values (dead/empty), with an adjustable overall occurrence of "1" (typically about 5%).

• There are 35 distinct arrangements of cell-states around a central cell (counting reflections and/or rotations as equivalent). Each rule-set also takes into account the state of central cell, thus have 70 distinct possible cell patterns based on a central cell and its 12 neighbors. This is a non-totalistic cellular automaton (unlike Conway's totalistic Game of Life).

• Every rule-set is a 70-digit binary number (which can be also be displayed as a decimal number for convenience). There are 2^70 (= 1.18 x 10^21) different possible rule-sets, a very vast rule-space.

• Each digit in the binary rule-set is a "sub-rule" that specifies the state of the central cell in the next time-step (generation) when the corresponding arrangement of neighbors (assigned to the aforementioned digit) has been detected.

• The rule-sets used above are given in the video descriptions.

• Most rule-sets (in the hundreds I have searched) are uninteresting, either dying or overpopulating quickly, or producing structureless chaos, or giving static ("still-life") or simple repeating ("blinker") patterns. A very small minority of rule-sets seem to provide examples of Wolfram's "Class IV" behavior, producing complex localized structures, sometimes long-lived. Simple "gliders" have been spotted in many rule-sets.