Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
FIGURe 3.5
a few iterations of the
Game of Life
Step 0
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Step 4
Step 5
Step 6
When set into motion, the Game of Life usually has quite chaotic results, with a lot
of activity exploding from its original live cells. Frequently after a number of itera-
tions the Game of Life settles in a more or less stable configuration, sometimes with
a few groups of cells that oscillate between two states.
One of the earliest questions that the researchers studying the Game of Life asked
themselves was this: “Is there an initial configuration of live cells that expands for-
ever?” They quickly started finding configurations that showed some surprising
behavior. One of those configurations is called a
glider
. It is a group of five live cells
that replicates itself one tile away after four iterations. The effect of a glider is that
of a little creature that moves across the grid (
Figure 3.6
). More interesting patterns
were found, such as a
glider gun
, a pattern that stays in one place but produces new
gliders that move off every 30 iterations.
FIGURe 3.6
a glider in the Game
of Life
Step 0
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Step 4
Gliders and glider guns show that in complex systems the most interesting behavior
takes place not at the scale of the individual parts but at the scale of groups of parts.
This is something that can be observed in many other complex systems as well. The
flocking of birds is a good example. A flock of birds moves as one; the group as a
whole seems to have a distinctive shape, direction, and purpose (
Figure 3.7
). In this
case, the “rules” that steer the birds operate on both scales. Flocking can be simu-
lated by having individual birds balancing their movement between moving toward
the center of the group, matching speed and direction with their neighbors, and
avoiding getting too close to their neighbors.
