This Zillions game 'Wireworlds' is a collection of cellular automata, and a generalisation of the famous automaton 'Wireworld', which has extremely simple rules: The background colour (usually black) stays unchanged, Red ('electron head') turns Blue (electron tail), Blue turns Yellow (Wire), yellow turns Red if it is adjacent to one or two Reds.
It is easy to code the logical gates AND, OR, NOT, NAND, NOT in Wireworld. By combining such gates the workings of a computer can be simulated. The default variant shows the NOT gate, the next variant the OR gate and so on.
The 'electron' gun on the left emits one electron every 12 cycles, just to demopnstrate the NOT gate. The interval between data ('electron' or 'not electron') at the output is 6 cycles. Distance between electrons for this gate to operate properly: multiples of 6 cycles.
Click button '1' ('6', '30', '00') to run one, six, thirty cycles or forever. This will show how the 'electrons' move through the 'wires'. The 'hook' sign to the right is the sign for the logical 'NOT'.
Apart from showing the famous Wireworld setup, this game 'Wireworlds' also allows you to create a whole class of automatons (all closely related to the orginal Wireworld) by clicking the 'Y' buttons at the right border.
The number of Red neighbors determines whether a Yellow square turns Red,
the number of Blue neighbors determines whether a Red square turns Blue,
the number of Yellow neighbors determines whether a Blue square turns Yellow.
Clicking a Y-button on advances a cell's stage. E.g., the buttons in the column underneath the red square determine when Red turns to Blue.
A few additional buttons are for the convenience to trigger several buttons simultaneously: Row of coloured buttons: Click a colour to reset a whole column to 'Y' or blank. Numbers of neighbors: Click to reset a whole row to 'Y' or blank.
Click the left, right, up, down buttons to shift the pattern on the board.
You can click the board to edit it. Click the coloured button at the lower right to change the paint colour. Click 'Draw Line' to paint or clear(!) a line on the board; mark it by clicking the start and end positions. You can paint several lines in a row, and you can change the paint colour in between. Click 'Draw Line' again to switch this mode off.
The 'Border' option determines whether the area outside the board is treated as wrapping around (north and south border joined, east and west border joined) or as permanently black.
The material presented here concentrates on the most important findings in Wireworld.
Many designs shown here have never published before.
The results presented here include contributions by Nyles Heise, Matthieu Walraet, David Moore
and Mark Owen (http://www.quinapalus.com/wi-index.html).
Please email me (karl at kiwi.gen.nz) if you come up with any improvements.
The classical Wireworld automaton was invented by Brian Silverman 1987. It can be run by the free program Mirek's Cellebration (www.mirekw.com), but Mirec's program contains only the most basic examples, and most of the gadgets given here in this Zillions program are missing in Mirec's program.
Also see Ed Peggs website (www.mathpuzzle.com, material from August 2002).
Other related Zillions games: 'Alive', 'Alive 2', 'Alive Auto', 'Game of Life', 'Rule110', 'Logic Gates'. |
