Uses a grid of cells and looks at each cell and the state (ex: on/off) of each of the surrounding neighbor cells and changes the state of the current cell according to a set of rules based on the neighbor cells’ states.

References

Implementations

  • 1

    # TODO: Implement in Python

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    const gridSize = 10;
const generations = 4;
const fillChance = 0.55;

const G = [];
const nextG = [];
for (let i = 0; i < gridSize; i++) {
  G[i] = [];
  nextG[i] = [];
  for (let j = 0; j < gridSize; j++) {
    if (Math.random() < fillChance || i === 0 || j === 0 || i === gridSize - 1 || j === gridSize - 1) {
      G[i][j] = '#';
    } else {
      G[i][j] = '.';
    }
    nextG[i][j] = '#';
  }
}

function CellularAutomata(fillShape, emptyShape) {
  const nextGrid = [];

  for (let i = 0; i < G.length; i++) {
    nextGrid[i] = [];
    for (let j = 0; j < G[i].length; j++) {
      let adjCount = 0;
      let twoAwayCount = 0;
      // look at the states of the neighboring cells
      for (let x = -2; x <= 2; x++) {
        for (let y = -2; y <= 2; y++) {
          if ((i + x >= 0 && i + x < G.length) && (j + y >= 0 && j + y < G[i].length)) {
            if (!(x !== 0 && y !== 0) && G[i + x][j + y] === emptyShape) {
              if (x === -2 || x === 2 || y === -2 || y === 2) {
                twoAwayCount++;
              } else {
                adjCount++;
              }
            }
          }
        }
      }
      // change the current cell's state according to these rules
      if ((adjCount >= 5)) {
        nextGrid[i][j] = fillShape;
      } else if (adjCount <= 1) {
        if (twoAwayCount < 3) {
          nextGrid[i][j] = fillShape;
        } else {
          nextGrid[i][j] = emptyShape;
        }
      } else {
        nextGrid[i][j] = emptyShape;
      }
    }
  }

  for (let i = 0; i < nextGrid.length; i++) {
    for (let j = 0; j < nextGrid[i].length; j++) {
      
      G[i][j] = nextGrid[i][j];
      
    }
  }
}

for (let iter = 0; iter < generations; iter++) {
  CellularAutomata('#', '.');
}