Hacker News Reader

Comment by Waterluvian | Hacker News Reader

Now I’m itching to muck with cellular automata. Anyone have any recommendations for engines (any language)?

You don’t really need an engine. You just need the right data structure to represent a cell and simple methods.

What you may be asking about is visualization. In this case, just use simple drawning functions in a graphics library that will draw a pixel to a screen canvas at the cells coordinates. Update on each tick.

the best program I'm aware of is called Golly

I agree Golly is the best for specifically cellular automata, but I came across this program called Visions of Chaos and I was shocked to see it essentially supports any and all types of simulation/generative/procedural/AI solvers and renderers OOTB (it downloads them as needed the first time you use each one) and it seems to have new updates almost every time I open the software.

Seriously amazing for not only fun but easy access to preconfigured solvers if you want to quickly test out ideas, plus it’s packed with presets too. I’ve racked up many hours using it since finding out about it a few months ago, highly recommend.

Their website lists all the features right on the homepage: https://www.softology.pro/voc.htm

It even has all the latest in ML, I use it to launch Stable Diffusion and CLIP all the time.

Man, you weren't kidding, thanks for posting this.

I'd use js/typescript/webpack if I wanted to set up something quick

putchar

Ahahaha. I mean with all the typical optimizations handled. Quadtree and such.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com