[HN Gopher] Conway's Game of Life, in real life
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Conway's Game of Life, in real life
Author : surprisetalk
Score : 312 points
Date : 2026-03-19 03:55 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lcamtuf.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (lcamtuf.substack.com)
| vunderba wrote:
| Nice. A friend of mine just picked up a Linnstrument, and I'm
| very tempted to create a Conway's Game of Life-based musical
| visualization for it.
|
| https://www.rogerlinndesign.com/linnstrument
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Neat! For homebrew / "iot" stuff, there's LED button panels
| like https://www.adafruit.com/product/1929 that could work.
| fwipsy wrote:
| I don't want to build this or pay for it, but I really want to
| mess with it for an hour.
| nsnzjznzbx wrote:
| You need a science museum!
| PetitPrince wrote:
| My Alma matter has a jumbo version of this, in which the game if
| life is one of several available mode
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioWall
| CJefferson wrote:
| I've always wanted something like this board, buttons which can
| light up (preferably a few colours), to use to make games. Anyone
| ever found such a board which is hackable / programmable?
| rmnclmnt wrote:
| Novation Launchpad used to be exactly that: you send MIDI CC
| messages with proper values and you can light up the grid (with
| different colors).
|
| Did that a few years back, i guess this might still be possible
| 1313ed01 wrote:
| > used to be
|
| Looks like they are still around?
| https://novationmusic.com/launchpad
|
| Also seems to be in stock locally.
|
| The device that I think popularized that design (citation
| needed) was the Monome (https://monome.org/) that looks like
| it is also still around and it has (always had?) some kind of
| open source license (https://github.com/monome).
| rmnclmnt wrote:
| Thanks for the heads up! I have been out of this loop for
| quite a while, glad to see it's still there!
|
| Yes Monome was this initial inspiration then followed by
| many, but it was way more expensive and niche IIRC
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| https://www.adafruit.com/category/280, they're ready made from
| 4x4 to 16x8 but in theory you can just put more modules into an
| enclosure.
| sodaplayer wrote:
| There's custom firmware project for the Novation Launchpad.
|
| I had a fork of this at one point where I made GoL for it and
| had mapped the lit cells to a MIDI output.
|
| https://github.com/mat1jaczyyy/lpp-performance-cfw
|
| I haven't tried this yet, but there's also an open source grid-
| controller project.
|
| https://github.com/203-Systems/MatrixOS
| cben wrote:
| Aliexpress has a lot of cheap "smart gomoku board" now, they
| are cheap rgb-lighted membrane button grids O(13x13) with
| firmware playing games like Go, Reversi etc.
| (https://he.aliexpress.com/item/1005010089221164.html,
| https://he.aliexpress.com/item/1005011840606955.html ...).
| These proved to be surprisingly fun with children, the tactile
| interface is neat, and they're a good middle ground that helps
| learn the rules of games (has 1-on-1 modes + solo against
| several levels of "AI") but not as brain-rot distracting like a
| tablet.
|
| I haven't tried reverse-engineering one yet, I hope at least
| some of these are hackable? Conway's life would certainly be
| one fun use, but custom games are totally something I'd want to
| make too!
|
| Are these actually membrane or are there some switches there? I
| assume membrane, if only based on the dirt-cheap price. Anyway
| in combination with lighting up + sound the feedback feels
| immersive enough, it's definitely more fun than poking a
| tablet.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| I wonder is there a version GoL where every bit on a computer-
| display or LCD TV is one cell? How does it look?
| alex_duf wrote:
| Do you mean every pixel or every sub-pixel? Sub-pixel is
| interesting because the geometry of the grid isn't going to be
| the same from one screen to the other. It might also look
| compressed horizontally.
| eps wrote:
| Conversely, it'd be cool to play it on an large empty office
| building.
|
| One window = one pixel.
| slow_typist wrote:
| Like Blinkenlights https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PZRUtKYCpms
| mlukaszek wrote:
| Or, in Krakow, Poland in 2012 :)
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KitN5HFGWc
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| Right but what if every window was an outward pointing LCD
| screen each having their own node-per-pixel GoL !:_)
| akkartik wrote:
| How many bits per pixel are you assuming, and are you imagining
| the red pixels are vertical neighbors with corresponding red
| pixels above and below, etc.?
|
| Should be easy to do on my phone: https://itch.io/post/15723528
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| Good point to explore
| akkartik wrote:
| At 8 bpp the effect is only colors moving vertically, up
| and down. After a while digging into it I realize why: most
| colors are too dark to be visible, we only see the most
| significant bits in each channel. And when those bits
| influence left or right the consequences are not visible.
|
| Maybe I should try 2bpp. Or some HSL where I can clamp L.
|
| _Edit:_ Oh yes, it 's interesting at 2bpp!
| dekhn wrote:
| I did something like this: a 64x64 (4K) display of GoL (among
| other things) using addressable pixels. Alas, I only took one
| video when the display was working and it wasn't fully cleaned
| up: https://photos.app.goo.gl/WUmVgBVVi6rXDqSB7
| slow_typist wrote:
| Tres cool.
|
| A grid of capacitive touch sensors could be printed directly on
| the pcb, bringing down costs by a degree of magnitude. Real
| switches are much more satisfying though.
| f1shy wrote:
| I want to do a game like lights out. I'm thinking in 3d
| printing transparent caps and using dirt chip pcb switches and
| standard leds. The cost must be also down to 30 cts. Would be
| like a middle ground.
| exolab wrote:
| > I figured out what would be a reasonable amount to spend on the
| project and then multiplied that by 10.
|
| I like the way you think.
| alexpotato wrote:
| Jeff Atwood has a great quote:
|
| "I needed to replace 18 lightbulbs in my chandelier. Turns out
| 18 times any number is a lot. In cash"
| self_awareness wrote:
| That's not a "physical" version of game of life -- that's a
| digital version, like every version, but with bigger pixels.
| gspr wrote:
| I think "physical" refers to the fact that you initialize the
| state by pressing physical buttons. That's quite accurate.
| self_awareness wrote:
| Well keyboard also has physical buttons. And mouse.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Does make me wonder if it's possible to make a physical /
| analog / mechanical version of Game of Life.
|
| fake edit: yes, kind of:
| https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/forums/topic/164622-moc-mec...
| zabzonk wrote:
| sure is - i made one using poker chips and a chessboard - i
| had to do the computations using my own brain though :-(
|
| https://latedev.wordpress.com/2011/06/25/a-poker-chip-
| comput...
| eps wrote:
| I saw one in a computer museum in Switzerland. It was a much
| larger field, it was just large orange LEDs (or were they
| tubes?), but it also cycled between a dozen of different cell
| automata games. Something about being able to see individual
| "pixels" made it really mesmerizing.
| mastermedo wrote:
| A thousand bucks for 17x17 touchscreen. Add a painting frame,
| hang it on the wall, and you made yourself amazing art for cheap.
| cjfd wrote:
| When I was a teenager, I read a book about assembly language for
| the commodore and implemented the game of life in a really simple
| way. I just used the text screen. To switch on a cell, I would
| put an asterisk ('*') in it. Then I could run my machine code
| program and it would evolve according to the rules of the game of
| life.
| abcd_f wrote:
| And who didn't do that! :)
|
| You could also 4x the resolution by using half- and quarter-
| block characters from the top half of the ASCII table (or it'd
| be the PETSCII one i C64 case).
| lproven wrote:
| > And who didn't do that! :)
|
| Exactly. It's even how I taught myself extremely basic Pascal
| -- getting my BASIC Life program running in Pascal. With
| asterisks.
|
| A taught a friend at uni, who was a much better programmer
| than me, how the algorithm worked. He did a pixel-by-pixel
| version in machine code, but it was a bit slow on a ZX
| Spectrum.
|
| So he did exactly the quarter-character-cell version you
| describe. I wrote the editor in BASIC, and he wrote a
| machine-code routine that kicked in when told and ran the
| generations. For extra fun he emitted some of the
| intermediate state to the border, so the border flashed
| stripes of colour as it calculated, so you could see it
| "thinking". Handy for static patterns -- you could see it
| hadn't crashed.
|
| I've been considering doing a quarter-cell Mandelbrot for
| about 30Y now. Never got round to it yet.
| jerf wrote:
| The answer to a lot of "wow, how did the 8-bit machine pull
| that off? it seems like that would eat a lot of RAM" is that
| the framebuffer _is_ the data storage. You were literally
| looking at the primary data store itself, because when a full-
| resolution framebuffer was 1 /4th your addressable RAM (and
| slightly more than that for your actual RAM since you couldn't
| ever quite use all 64KB no matter how you mapped it), you need
| to get the most bang for the buck out of that RAM usage as you
| can.
| tempaccount5050 wrote:
| Ha, I remember doing this with my Apple //. I forget what I
| was doing, but realized if I could set a pixel and later get
| what color was drawn at that location I could use it as a big
| array. Didn't know about peek/poke yet. One of those core
| "computers are magic" memories.
| alnwlsn wrote:
| When I got into retrocomputing a few years ago, I also did
| this. Works great with TRS-80 semigraphic characters. First, I
| wrote it in C with a Z80 c compiler. The, I wrote it again in
| assembly and it was much faster! Amazing!
| mkirsten wrote:
| It is beautiful
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I love this and would love to see it on a wall at our office or
| something like that. Maybe there's smaller/cheaper led/switches
| that would work in a handheld version.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| Would be interesting to do this with people and observe the
| inevitable mistakes they make.
|
| Now that would be simulating life witg life.
| ordu wrote:
| Well, people can die if they have too many or too little of
| neighbors, but they can't be summoned from a thin air if they
| have just enough neighbors. Hard to simulate life with people.
| Though if you are ready for a simulation step of 20 years or
| so... But it still may not work, because you need people of two
| opposing sexes and compatible genders near the empty sell to
| fill it. In Game of Life all cells are hermaphrodites.
|
| But I agree mistakes might be fun to watch.
| mittermayr wrote:
| Totally off-topic, and I may be wrong, but I immediately loved
| the non-LLM writing-style and felt glued to the content just
| through the writing alone. It's getting rare.
| zytek wrote:
| lcamtuf is doing that for decades!
| tmountain wrote:
| Personally, I can barely stomach reading LLM writing. I find
| myself closing lots of articles after a sentence or two. I
| wonder how this plays out longer-term regarding engagement.
| jerf wrote:
| In probably another year or two I expect the metrics will
| show that it is a positive turn off. Unfortunately we're on
| the cutting edge of this particular movement and there's
| still a lot more "value" to be "extracted" from the general
| public before they all get wise to it too.
|
| The next problem we'll face after that, with the 1-2 years
| newer AIs of the time, is that the default LLM voice is just
| a particular affectation created by the training, not "the
| voice of LLMs" or anything. It's trivial to kick them into a
| different style. I just used AI to do some architecture
| design documents this week, and prompted it to first look at
| about 1-2k words that I wrote myself all organically for the
| style. The good news is the resulting documents almost, but
| admittedly, not quite entirely, lack that LLM style. They're
| still prone to more bullet lists than I use directly; then
| again, in this context they were fairly appropriate, so I'm
| not too triggered by the result.
|
| The bad news is, that's all it takes to make AI writing that
| isn't in that default tone. It's not that hard. Students
| cheating on essays have already figured it out, the spammers
| really can't be that far behind. Probably more stuff than we
| realize is already AI output, it's just the stragglers and
| those who don't really care (which I imagine is a lot of
| spammers, after all) who are still failing to tweak the
| style. They'll catch up as soon as engagement falls off.
| fwipsy wrote:
| I think HN readers are the leading edge of the technology
| literate. Might take longer than you think for the general
| public to start noticing "AI voice."
| Lerc wrote:
| I have not felt that it was becoming rare. Certainly on
| platforms like YouTube you can see automated processes cranking
| blandness at scale. I haven't found it encroaching on the
| topics that interest me like toy electronic projects, how some
| ancient game rendered its Sprites, colour space analysis, or a
| compiler that fits in a tweet,
|
| I'm sure there are an abundant source of 'How I hustled a
| thumpawangy into $1000 a month in subscriptions" written by AI,
| but I doubt I could perceive a loss in that compared to the
| ones we had before.
| fwipsy wrote:
| Do you have a link? Been looking to switch thumpawangy
| vendors.
| possiblydrunk wrote:
| Nicely done! Scale matters. If you make something big enough
| relative to its expected size, it will impress and captivate,
| even if it's simple. General observation, not that the
| construction here was by any means simple.
| lproven wrote:
| This is fantastic, but there's no way I am taking the time to
| build one, and the cost is a little frightening...
| rojoroboto wrote:
| I bet that the author would really get a kick out of the T2 Tile
| Project.
| MrGilbert wrote:
| I wonder if going for keyboard switches with RGB could bring the
| price down, if you then either print the keycaps yourself, our
| use a 3d printing service. 23 Cherry MX switches cost 20EUR,
| that's roughly 260EUR for a 17x17 matrix.
| waterproof wrote:
| Should be doable to implement GoL on an ortholinear RGB
| keyboard using QMK
| MrGilbert wrote:
| I mean - that sounds like an awesome project in itself!
| kangalioo wrote:
| A much cheaper way might have been to buy a couple of Novation
| Launchpads. 8x8 full RGB tactile buttons for 90EUR, MIDI-
| controllable. Four of those next to another for 16x16 at 360EUR
| plus a little bit for cables and controller comes out at 1/3 the
| price
| layer8 wrote:
| It would be larger (even with the mini), you'd have gaps
| between the four, and also the four middle buttons in each part
| have their corners clipped.
|
| But you can get illuminated buttons for less money:
| https://www.ebay.com/itm/173922115935
| relaxing wrote:
| Looking at teardown images of the launchpad pcb, it might be
| possible to shave down the ground plane on the two non-button
| sides enough that you could mate them up with no bezel
| interfering.
|
| Re: illuminated tact's: Old launchpads go for $25 - $30 on
| ebay, and you don't have to purchase your own control and
| power components...
| layer8 wrote:
| The size and button shape concerns would remain.
| jFriedensreich wrote:
| how is this real life more than a monitor, its just bigger
| pixels. i was expecting programmable live cells or something
| mechanical
| waterproof wrote:
| Check out the video - you can draw on the game by pressing the
| switches.
| smcameron wrote:
| Something like those switches might be made very cheaply with a
| 3D printer, possibly a laser cutter, some transparent or
| semitransparent acrylic sheet, tactile switches and some LEDs. I
| designed a cheapo replacement for $50 tellite switches and got
| the price down to about $0.60 Not quite the same, as these are a
| lot bigger, and getting things down to the desired size might be
| troublesome. Anyway, here's a little video of my fake cheapo
| tellite switches: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaenrgPVCjc
| zuiko_39182 wrote:
| this matches my experience exactly
| Tepix wrote:
| Lovely project indeed. If you want to build your own: I found a
| whole bunch of much cheaper illuminated switches on AliExpress
| within minutes.
| Nevermark wrote:
| This is fantastic.
|
| I happen to own a physical pong table. Everyone loves it. [0]
| There is something magical about material and only-does-one-thing
| instantiations of digital things.
|
| ----
|
| I am really looking forward to a flat table top screen consisting
| of millions of magnetically-controlled vertical-extruding rod
| pixels, with actual color controlled pixels along their length.
| For an amazing table display/extrusion of D&D dungeons and
| terrain, for miniatures.
|
| A little sensor ability, and when the extrusion "scrolls"
| laterally, it could create little lips that move the miniatures
| too, so they stay "in place". And move NPCs around at the DMs
| direction. Now turn of the room lights, and use the light pixels
| not just for color, but for lighting effects like wall lamps
| flickering, add spooky position-distributed sounds...
|
| That has to be coming soon, right?
|
| Some part of me wants to describe it Claude, iterate, and say
| "Now polish that design, economically optimize the parts, link in
| the supply chain, and ship me the first review unit." That has to
| be coming soon, right?
|
| The lines separating planes of reality, they are a blurring,
| quickly.
|
| ----
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84Ymt9BAq5s
| relaxing wrote:
| And optimize for repair when one of the thousands of actuators
| gets stuck or burns out...
|
| Here's a thought, though: you've seen the sand table + kinect
| projection mapping demo? What about that, plus a two-axis
| moving magnet sand mandala marble drawing table? The actuator
| could draw the path /sculpt the terrain, then release the
| marble and grab the figurines?
| Nevermark wrote:
| Thanks. I had not seen that. It is definitely the poor mans
| software controlled physical reality I am looking for! :)
|
| Yeah, that would provide a much richer environment for table
| top role play games. And allow for telepresence meet ups.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| the trick it to be able to actuate the rods without placing a
| linear actuator on every one, but it's a complicated problem.
| Magnetism? hydraulic shafts fed and drained by a series of
| gates making a matrix? acoustic levitation?
|
| I'm reminded of the old BERG London pixel track display that
| used a little cart with a vertical array of solenoids that
| would travel the length of the display flipping each
| individual pixel on an off physically.
| https://www.designboom.com/technology/pixel-track-berg-
| cloud... It's on my list of'next time i'm unemployed'
| projects to pick up and open source a design for.
| mvrckhckr wrote:
| Great idea and execution. I like your thinking.
| meindnoch wrote:
| Eh. I thought they had somehow created a physical realization of
| Conway's Game of Life.
| alexb_ wrote:
| This isn't what this is about, but I wonder if anyone has created
| a fully mechanized version of Conway's Game of Life. The fact
| that you only have to follow 4 rules, and each cell only needs to
| observe its neighbors to follow those rules, makes me wonder if
| it's possible to track these things mechanically. I unfortunately
| don't know enough about mechanical engineering to do such a
| thing.
| kanapala wrote:
| Technology Will Save Us, from a brighter past, produced the
| Arcade Coder as their swan song. It had 12x12 tactile buttons
| with color leds inside, a companion app to program it with
| scratch like code blocks, and interactive tutorials. It's ESP32
| based. There's an effort to continue it's life, ast the app was
| on the app store for a brief time.
| https://github.com/padraigfl/twsu-arcade-coder-esp32
| satiated_grue wrote:
| This would be something neat to do with a core memory array, just
| like this but bigger:
|
| https://www.core64.io/
| alnwlsn wrote:
| Wow, in switches alone this would cost me $1200! Which actually
| isn't that bad for a one off-like this with easily available
| components - I've seen worse. You can of course take your chances
| with Aliexpress Specials but be warned: some of those cheap
| switches are _cheap switches_ (sometimes, they 're barely even
| switches). And you won't be getting them inside of 2 weeks.
|
| I think I would have tried mechanical keyboarding switches that
| can take an LED and a clear keycap. Not really the same effect,
| but you could probably have gotten out to 24x24 for the same
| price.
| imglorp wrote:
| Someone's senior project was an EEPROM based life in discrete
| logic and a bunch of LEDs. There was no CPU; the ROM served as a
| state machine. I wish I knew more about it now; I'm not sure how
| it latched state.
| ge96 wrote:
| Damn around $900 just for the switches, I feel it, little project
| costing a lot but it's fun
|
| In my case a $300 camera that produces worse photos than an old
| flagship $50 camera from eBay
| sleepybrett wrote:
| In the seatac airport there used to be a big 'life wall' they did
| their switches w/ capacitive metal disks
| andysalmela34 wrote:
| well written but i disagree with the conclusion. the data
| supports multiple interpretations
| Melraidin wrote:
| > Can it be made for less?
|
| Would you be able to use the LEDs as light sensors and eliminate
| the switch component entirely? Maybe a tubular shield over each
| LED so it doesn't interact with others around it then covering it
| with your finger could be read as toggling the state?
| egypturnash wrote:
| The rest of your hand is not transparent and will cover a lot
| of other buttons while you're only trying to push one.
| Melraidin wrote:
| I'd assume you could detect a difference between a
| completely/nearly completely covered LED shield and one with
| a large gap between your hand at the top of the shield.
| bawolff wrote:
| > To bring the idea to life, I started with rigorous budgeting: I
| figured out what would be a reasonable amount to spend on the
| project and then multiplied that by 10.
|
| Lol, this is the way to do hobbies
| sleepybrett wrote:
| It's not edge to edge, though maybe if you built your own silicon
| overlay you could make it edge to edge.. but adafruit sells these
| tileable pcbs and silicon overlays with capacitive buttons:
| https://www.adafruit.com/product/3954
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(page generated 2026-03-19 23:01 UTC)