Game of Life and Ghosts

A 3D visualization of Conway's Game of Life where each generation sinks down into a glowing history stack.

Overview

The current generation sits on top; each step the previous generation sinks down into a history stack below. 8 history layers fade in opacity and color giving a glowing 3D time-slice effect from a fixed isometric camera.

Features

• 3D History Stack: Watch generations accumulate into a glowing vertical timeline
• Interactive Controls: Click cells to toggle their state
• Pause/Resume: Control the simulation speed
• Isometric View: Fixed camera angle for optimal 3D visualization

Demo

Live Demo →

Discussion

Hacker News →

Tech Stack

• TypeScript - Type-safe JavaScript
• Vite - Fast development and building
• Three.js - 3D graphics library

Getting Started

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/vnglst/stacked-game-of-life.git
cd stacked-game-of-life

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Start development server
npm run dev

Open http://localhost:5173 to view in your browser.

Controls

• Click on a cell to toggle its state (alive/dead)
• Spacebar to pause/resume the simulation

How It Works

Conway's Game of Life Rules

1. Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies (underpopulation)
2. Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives on
3. Any live cell with more than three live neighbours dies (overpopulation)
4. Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours becomes alive (reproduction)

3D Visualization

Each generation is rendered as a layer of cubes. As new generations are computed, older layers sink down and fade out, creating a mesmerizing 3D time visualization of the cellular automaton's evolution.

License

MIT

Author

Koen van Gilst