GOL-033 · technical companion

Life Force

The whole field's living fraction changes the rules of survival and birth. Recorded minimum stays moderate rapid births and deaths.

Open simulation →Markdown Download example JSON

At a glance

geometry: Square lattice
neighborhood: Eight Moore neighbors + global living fraction
states: Binary occupancy + fixed residence requirements and stable cycles + previous-Step evidence
update: Frozen density and threshold rules, recorded-stay gates, post-commit change-rate assignments
renderer: Canvas 2D

Purpose

Explore population feedback: a shared living fraction changes local birth and survival thresholds. The default favors growth in an empty world and tightens survival as it fills.

Rule contract

Life force p is living cells divided by all logical cells, not living divided by dead. Every Step freezes p and the eight immediate Moore neighbors. Default survival is 0 ≤ neighbors ≤ floor(8 × (1 − p)); birth needs neighbors ≥ max(1, ceil(8 × p)). Equality passes. Moderation permits a proposed state flip only if the cell has completed its recorded minimum stay; all results then commit together. No evolution randomness or spontaneous revival occurs. After all results commit, actual births plus deaths divided by all sites assigns a new stay only to cells that changed. The setting turn counts as cycle one; a one-cycle stay allows changing next turn. Existing durations remain fixed despite later rates and rule edits.

Controls

Each threshold curve has endpoints at 0% and 100% life, a square-root/linear/squared response, and down/nearest/up rounding. Reversed endpoints reverse its relationship to population. Enable births, Enable deaths and Moderate state changes are manual Primary controls. Moderation defaults on: at or below 5% change the stay is one cycle; otherwise ceil(change% × 10 / 100), capped at ten. Quiet rate, maximum-stay rate and maximum cycles are editable; quiet rate must stay below maximum-stay rate. Four randomizers change all parameters, survival (including minimum), birth or minimum stay. All preserve primary controls and the chosen field size, edges, speed, display options, pattern, density and seed. Each resets the same selected opening and plays. Tooltips name each scope. No opening/world or random-seed action remains. Turning moderation off bypasses existing holds, ages continue, and changes while off receive stay one.

Inspection and behavior

Pause and enable Inspect cell to see global density, raw and rounded thresholds, local count and exact next result, plus prior-Step evidence. Lime means surviving life, cream new or initial life, and optional coral crosses mark death. Discreet numeric indicators report population, life force, last change percentage and blocked changes. Extinction, equilibrium and cycles are legitimate outcomes, not guaranteed chaos. Inspection also reports stable cycles, assigned duration, recorded change rate, remaining blocked Steps and the ordinary proposal versus final held result. Show stays marks held living cells gold and held dead sites as small muted dots. Initial and manually painted cells are unrestricted. Default 1,000-Step measurements reduce average population swings by about 63% at 160 square, but synchronized releases can still create individual large swings.

Reproducibility

Fresh visits start paused with 10% Random Life, a 160-square torus and 16 Steps per second. Reset rebuilds the selected seeded field. Half field begins at 50%; shared classic fields are available. Version-two compositions preserve curves, moderation, switches, seed, density, pattern, field size and topology. Complete version-one compositions explicitly load with moderation off to reproduce their original behavior. Reset also clears every residence record. Painting resets only the edited cell; unchanged cells retain their recorded stays. Evolved boards and view settings are excluded.

Performance

Global population and committed-change reductions, eight local reads per site and one future-stay assignment pass: O(N) time and memory. Canvas 2D supports 80/120/160-square fields, bounded or wrapped edges, and the shared bounded Fast clock.

Reproduce an opening

Download the example above, open the simulation, expand the controls, then use Share & reproduce → Import JSON. The example uses authored rules and a fixed seeded starting field; it is independent of the site’s editable default composition. Import starts paused at Step zero.

Share links and JSON reproduce the configured starting conditions, including hidden layers rebuilt by Reset. They do not save an evolved board, hand-painted cells, speed or display preferences. Determinism applies to the same rule version and Step sequence; real-time playback rates vary by device.

Large fields, dense populations and large interaction radii increase the work per Step. Start with a small field and radius, then increase them while paused. Read the configuration format and automated-access guide for compatibility details.