Re: John H. Conway's Game of Life for the 3k expanded VIC
Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2021 9:19 am
I thought the meaning of "overscan" should have been clear from the context but so be it.chysn wrote:Oh! See, back in my day we called that an "embiggened screen."
The Gosper glider gun (which is the first one found) fits into a 36x9 bounding box. The Simkin glider gun (which is a fairly recent find) fits into a 33x14 box.But seriously, it's a good idea, because for the regular Game of Life rules, there's an enormous difference between 22 and 48 cells in width. You need around 40 cells in width (maybe a little less?) for the smallest functioning gun.
Next thing then though is the capability to see the complete evolution of the R-pentomino. That one needs over 1000 generations to stablize, it sends out six gliders and the stable pattern that remains at the end spans 109x52 pixels - not counting some extra space needed during its evolution. That one brings a text mode GOL implementation quickly to its limits.
The R-pentomino is the default example pattern supplied with VIC Life and it is loaded when you press the [L] key.