HistoricalLife

Introduction

HistoricalLife is an extension of Conway's Game of Life, proposed by Dave Greene, and implemented in one CA editor/player, Mirek's Cellebration version 4.2. A live cell, instead of dying, becomes a 'history' state (state 2). The state 2 cells behave identically to state 0 cells and serve as a visual map of which cells have, at one time or another, been alive. They can also be used to add labels and annotations.

HistoricalLife has not been in common use since at least 2010, when Golly 2,1 added support for the seven-state LifeHistory rule. Golly 2.2 and later will silently convert MCell-format HistoricalLife patterns to the LifeHistory rule.