MCell, Mirek's Cellebration

A web-based Cellular Automata explorer allowing to view, animate, create and study hundreds of Cellular Automata rules and patterns from many classic and custom Cellular Automata families.

Author: Mirek Wojtowicz
Website: https://mcell.ca
Contact: info@mcell.ca
Discord: https://discord.gg/FhagUkEz
GitHub: https://github.com/MiDevel/mcell-webapp

Table of Contents

• Features
• Development
• Deployment
• Contributing
• Acknowledgments
• Roadmap
• License

Features

• 1-D and 2-D Cellular Automata.
• 13 different CA families: Life, Generations, Weighted Life, Vote for Life, Rules tables, Cyclic CA, 1-D totalistic CA, 1-D binary CA, General binary, Neumann binary, Larger than Life, Margolus, Weighted Generations
• Support for different neighborhoods: Moore 8 and 9, von Neumann 4 and 5, Margolus, neighborhood ranges.
• Support for many different file formats: Life 1.03, Life 1.05, Life 1.06, RLE, dbLife, Xlife, MCell and variations of the above.
• Many predefined rules for each family.
• 1500+ patterns.
• Support for all major browsers and modern mobile devices.
• Rich user interface, zooming, panning, auto-fitting patterns, keyboard shortcuts to many MCell functions.
• Built-in Patterns Explorer.
• Support for up to 256 states/colors of cells.
• Configurable simulation speed, step-by-step simulation, run for/up to a specified number of generations.
• Ability to experiment with custom rules in all supported families (only as text definition a.t.m.).
• Saving and loading patterns via Clipboard.
• Desktop drag-and-drop support for loading local patterns.
• Advanced editing features: scribble; draw dots, lines, rectangles, boxes, circles, discs; select, cut, copy, paste, drag and drop, flip, rotate, invert.
• Interactive drawing without pausing the simulation.
• Randomizing and Seeding patterns.
• Configurable, event-driven Undo and Redo.
• Simple statistics.
• Dark and light themes.

Development

install dependencies

npm install

build the TypeScript files

npm run build

start the web server and watch for changes

npm run dev

start the web server

npm run start

watch the TypeScript files

npm run watch

lint the TypeScript files

npm run lint

format the TypeScript files

npm run format

Deployment

To prepare files for deployment to a web server:

1. Ensure all your changes are committed and TypeScript files are properly typed.

2. Run the deployment script:

   npm run deploy

This will:

• Build the TypeScript files
• Clean any existing deployment directory
• Create a fresh deploy directory containing:
  • index.html
  • favicon.ico
  • assets/ directory
  • data/ directory
  • dist/ directory (compiled TypeScript)
  • styles/ directory

The contents of the deploy directory will be ready to upload to your web hosting server.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md

Roadmap

See ROADMAP.md

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the many individuals who have contributed to making MCell possible.

• Prof. David Griffeath, The Primordial Soup Kitchen author, for comments, encouragement and the "MCell" (Mirek's Cellebration) name idea.

• Stephen Wolfram, for kind mentioning MCell and its author in the book "A New Kind of Science".

• Prof. Rudy Rucker, author of CelLab (https://www.fourmilab.ch/cellab/), for his invaluable contributions to the field of Cellular Automata and his comments and suggestions.

• Johan Bontes, author of Life32, for insights into Cellular Automata coding.

• James Matthews, webmaster for Generation5.org, for his helpful comments, reviews and suggestions.

• John Elliott, author of Webside CA Java applet, for endless discussions and invaluable suggestions.

• Michael Sweney and Lionel Bonnetier, authors of many "Generations" rules and patterns.

• Dr Dana Eckart, Paul Callahan, Alan Hensel, Ken S. Mueller, Ed Pegg Jr, David Ingalls Bell (https://members.canb.auug.org.au/~dbell/), for words of encouragement and suggestions.

• Ben Schaeffer, author of LifeMN and many Weighted Life rules.

• Stephen Silver, author of Life Lexicon and of many StarWars rule patterns.

• Prof. Tomoaki Suzudo, author of CA applets and many Neumann binary rules and patterns.

• Jason Summers, author of Life patterns, for many Life and Weighted Life patterns.

• Jason Rampe, author of "Visions Of Chaos" and "Tiled CA", for many unique patterns in various rules.

• Brian Prentice, for many interesting patterns in several rules.

• And many others...

This list represents just a few of the many individuals who have contributed to the project. Thank you, guys!

License

See MIT License with Attribution Requirement