Set up the game of life by choosing grid size (bigger is slower). Choose in range 16-64. To set up the actual cells of the grid, click the mouse to place. Click while holding b to erase. Press space when done. Also, you can press r to have randomly generated cells.
Conway's Game of Life, optimized a bit for performance (if it went faster, we could not tell what it was doing). Conway's Game of Life uses simple rules, but a dynamic pattern emerges. 1) Every live (black) cell with 2 or 3 live cells one unit above, below, to the side, or diagonally around it remains alive. If this condition is not met, the cell dies (becomes white). 2) A dead cell with exactly 3 cells surrounding it becomes alive. These rules mimic birth (dead cell becoming alive when there are 3 "parents"), overpopulation (cell dies if more than 3 neighbors), and extinction (cell dies if less than 2 neighbors). There is an entire wiki devoted to common patterns which emerge during the game. Because this simulator is small, it cannot be used to create gargantuan patterns.
