This project is inspired by The Enlightened Game of Life. Built with Javascript and D3.js
A photosensitive game of life where cells gain energy from a propagating electromagnetic wave (Ricker wavelet). The cells live in a finite square well with perfect electrically conducting boundaries. The wave is simulated using the FDTD method.
At each generation, cells lose 1% of their energy gained from the wave. If a cell has a certain amount of energy and it's alive, it lives onto the next generation regardless of Conway's rules.
The animation is viewable here. The wave is shown in grayscale, and the cells are colored according to their energy (blue - less energy, red - more energy). After a certain amount of generations, the field is taken away. The cells then lose energy and the normal Game of Life unfolds.
It would be awesome to encorporate evolution in this CA. Basically, some percentage of the cells would be photosensitive. A cell that is brought to life (exactly three neighbors) becomes photosensitive if at least two of its parents are photosensitive. Evolution can be turned on and off with a switch at the beginning of the simulation.
Knobs to control the strength of the field, photosensitivty of the cells, etc.