[HN Gopher] Build a working game of Tetris in Conway's Game of L...
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Build a working game of Tetris in Conway's Game of Life (2014)
Author : wxw
Score : 265 points
Date : 2024-12-27 07:04 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (codegolf.stackexchange.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (codegolf.stackexchange.com)
| szopa wrote:
| This is simply... incredibly impressive. I wasn't expecting they
| would build a computer all the way up from a CPU and memory to an
| assembler to a compiler, all in the game of life.
|
| Kudos.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It reminds me of people building computers in Minecraft, but
| for Game of Life they had to go another abstraction level lower
| and build the basics like wires and transistors out of GoL
| constructs.
| eichin wrote:
| I was actually a _tiny_ bit disappointed - I was hoping for a
| closer coupling of tetris-logic to life-logic :-) Per
| https://conwaylife.com/wiki/Universal_computer the first
| turing-machine-in-Life goes back to 2000, and "building a CPU
| to run code" is at this point the "obvious" way to do it. See
| https://nicholas.carlini.com/writing/2020/intro-to-circuits-...
| for a tutorial with a (circular) "final goal of designing an
| Intel 4004 and using it to simulate the game of life."
| OscarCunningham wrote:
| Right, they made the odd choice to use Life to simulate a
| different cellular automaton and then built logic gates in
| that automaton. But you can in fact build logic gates
| directly with gliders in the Game of Life itself. The extra
| level of abstraction multiplies the area of the final result
| by about 20000.
| mukunda_johnson wrote:
| TIL that Conway's game is turing complete. Wow.
| throwaway71271 wrote:
| then you will be even more impressed by Rule 110 being turing
| complete with a specific background pattern.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_110
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| It gets even funnier, some folks implemented a version in
| geometry nodes within Blender.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSoqddxoCl8
|
| One could do all sorts of fun abstractions with the
| simulation data. =3
| nomilk wrote:
| Struggling to wrap my head around how this is possible. Seems
| others are too [0]. A computer made in, say, minecraft can be
| given inputs. But since GoL is a zero player game (the player
| only selects the initial states), how can it possibly compute
| anything other than the static inputs it's originally provided?
| Perhaps that's sufficient for Turing Completeness? (when I
| click 'Run' on the provided link, my chrome tab becomes
| unresponsive; was hoping to disprove my own disbelief by
| playing Tetris in GoL but thus far unsuccessful, yet remaining
| hopeful!).
|
| [0] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/394957/why-can-
| conway-s-...
|
| [1] https://copy.sh/life/?pattern=TetrisOTCAMP.mc
| chunkyks wrote:
| If you think about it, a Turing machine is also Turing
| complete, and also is a zero player game where one only sets
| initial inputs...
| hcs wrote:
| > how can it possibly compute anything other than the static
| inputs it's originally provided? Perhaps that's sufficient
| for Turing Completeness?
|
| Yes, the basic Turing machine model isn't "interactive", it
| takes some initial input and runs from there.
|
| Edit: Maybe a better way of putting this:
|
| Since you can build a Turing machine as a GoL pattern that
| will interact with another pattern (its input), analysis of
| GoL patterns includes analysis of Turing machines, generally.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| The basic Turing machine model isn't interactive, but
| Turing also discussed "choice" machines that were. They're
| a variant of what we now call non-deterministic turing
| machines where the decision is determined by a human oracle
| instead of some other method.
| OscarCunningham wrote:
| Right. The principled way to interact with a GoL computer is
| to implement yourself in the game.
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| Game of life is no different from other computers in this
| regard. You can make it have no inputs (just disconnect your
| mouse/keyboard in the case of your computer), or you can make
| it have inputs (just have a few GoL cells be controlled
| externally).
| MPSimmons wrote:
| it turns out it CAN play Doom. That's impressive
| fosterfriends wrote:
| I love how projects like this can give folks a chance to
| understand and derive computer mechanics from scratch, in a
| visual way. I feel like living in the land of bits and high level
| constructs for too long really creates black boxes and fear that
| it's too complicated to ever understand the metal. Projects like
| that dismistify things in clean 2d space. Props, and great write
| up!
| modeless wrote:
| Building larger switching squares out of smaller ones reminds me
| of the infinite zoom recursive life game:
| https://oimo.io/works/life/
| reeeeee wrote:
| Thank you for posting this, I never saw this before. This is
| seriously impressive, and it would make a nice screensaver.
| neontomo wrote:
| I wonder why nerds are obsessed with Game of Life. I know I am
| one of them, but I still don't quite get why it hits the spot so
| well
| Towaway69 wrote:
| Something to do with the name perhaps!
|
| Game of Death doesn't sound half as fun ;)
| Y_Y wrote:
| That's what we spend the rest of our time playing
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| I see it as a sort of computer programming equivalent of god.
| It's so fundamental, beautiful in its simplicity and diversity.
| The people doing this work are like extreme devotees.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| The obsession with technical things is a reflection of how
| divorced we have become with the natural world. As we need to
| attend less and less to basic needs, the mind turns inwards,
| and not always for the better.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Easy to implement, but much room for optimization.
|
| The rules are simple, but give rise to complexity.
|
| Despite conservation of mass and such not being a part of the
| rules, what appear to us to be "objects" arise, and can even
| exhibit velocity! Physics-lite results out of nowhere.
|
| Finally, nerds like simulations.
| bungula wrote:
| I see it as a better Physics - current Physics as we understand
| it is messy, continuous, unintuitive, and contradictory. Kinda
| frustrating for computer science folks.
|
| Game of Life on the other hand is so simple it can be written
| up in a few lines of code, and still can give rise to endless
| complexity.
| sargon23 wrote:
| I only have one word to say about this.
|
| Doom.
| dang wrote:
| Related. Others?
|
| _Build a Working Game of Tetris in Conway 's Game of Life_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38760965 - Dec 2023 (2
| comments)
|
| _Build a working game of Tetris in Game of Life (2013)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32907893 - Sept 2022 (1
| comment)
|
| _Build a Working Game of Tetris in Conway 's Game of Life
| (2014)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22871417 - April
| 2020 (11 comments)
|
| _Building a Working Game of Tetris in Conway 's Game of Life_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15247935 - Sept 2017 (2
| comments)
|
| _Building a working game of Tetris in Conway 's Game of Life_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15246348 - Sept 2017 (46
| comments)
| briandear wrote:
| I woke up to this article and now I feel profoundly inadequate.
| SchwKatze wrote:
| This is the first stackexchange answer that I see that starts
| with accomplishments like a essay.
| 256_ wrote:
| It's an ugly and stupid computer and the "display" is barely
| visible. It also doesn't have a cache, or MUL/DIV/MOD
| instructions. Not very impressive. It wasn't even actually made
| in the Game of Life.
|
| Also, if I had 1p for every time someone saw a hobbyist CPU and
| asked "can it run Doom", I'd be a zillionaire.
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