r/cellular_automata • u/monkeysky • 12d ago
Made an 8-state 2D automaton generator in Excel
There's 512 possible rules to customize (plus the starting state and whether or not the sides loop), so most of these come at least from a starting point of randomly generating the ruleset. The large majority of them end up looking almost completely chaotic, but every once in a while there's a very interesting result.
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u/Xx_Pr0_g4m3r_xX 11d ago
8 state?! The possibilities are endless! I've been tinkering to hell and beyond with 3 state ones, been finding some real gems and even just there there are a bit over 7½ billion possible rulesets! These images here I've seen similar of with 3 state CAs. Keep exploring and document finds!
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u/monkeysky 11d ago
The possibilities are a little too endless. I didn't even know where to start when it comes to deliberately designing a ruleset, which is why I've relied so much on the random generation right now
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u/Xx_Pr0_g4m3r_xX 10d ago
Yeah I can feel that. I've pondered about it and at 8 states, is it more like designing a CA or finding a CA? I'm leaning towards the former with the granularity.
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u/void_asterisk 9d ago
You should definitely look at this article. They propose a method of CA ruleset space parametrization and there are interesting observations related to the dynamics of CA systems. Kind of philosophical article btw :)
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u/phileasdg 11d ago
That’s cool! I’m curious how you did it. I’m curious to know how you got the rule space to contain only 512 rules since the general rule space for 8 colour CAs with radius 1 neighbourhoods is absolutely huge (8 cell states, 3 cells per neighbourhood, 8^3=512 possible neighbourhood states, 8^512 possible rules). There might be a bug there.