Comments on: Langton Ants in PyGame

By: Will

Will — Wed, 23 May 2007 13:13:46 +0000

I’m using ‘iG:Syntax Hiliter‘, which does suck because it messes things up when you switch between the wysiwyg and the code editor. :-(

By: jorge vargas

jorge vargas — Tue, 22 May 2007 19:48:12 +0000

Well this seems to be a simplification of Conwa’ys “Game Of Life” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway’s_Game_of_Life

as James Paige said it’s patterns are like that because of the chain of events.

Anyway a nice example on pygames.

PS: a question, which syntax highligting are you using? currently all the ones I have found for wordpress suck.

By: Will

Will — Tue, 22 May 2007 08:02:47 +0000

D’oh! That should be 90 degrees left/right. Thanks for pointing it out.

By: Niki

Niki — Tue, 22 May 2007 07:48:00 +0000

What’s the meaning of 90% left/right?
From code it seems like 100% left/right.

By: Will

Will — Sat, 19 May 2007 14:26:48 +0000

I think that would put ants directly on top of each other, i.e on the same cell, which causes a much simpler pattern. If you place two ants on the same cell with the original code, you’ll see the same thing happens. Its only when there are an odd number of ants that you get them making patterns.

By: K

Sat, 19 May 2007 14:17:01 +0000

I modified the code to put 1000 ants on the screen just to see what happened. Interestingly only some of the ants made real patterns. Most just “wiggled” a bit, but mostly stayed on the spot?

for i in range(1,10000,10):
ant = Ant(grid, int(x) + (i % 80), int(y) + (i % 56), ant_image)
ants.append(ant)

By: James Paige

James Paige — Fri, 18 May 2007 21:38:32 +0000

> …explain to me how two simple rules can create such a complex pattern.

because the rules don’t exist in a vacuum. They exist in an enviromnent where the previous results of the rules continue to matter. These two simple rules could only produce a simple result if the whole playing field was wiped clean on every iteration.

Or was that question rhetorical? :)