Cellular Automata Package

Alright, so maybe I need to work on my user friendliness in my programs. Sue me. Ah lets see, the program starts up with a board full of blank cells. In order for something interesting to happen, you need to fill it up with either brain cells or life cells. Thats what the Brain and Life buttons do.

In the upper right hand corner of the screen, there is a textfield with a number below it. The number indicates how many generations are computed before redisplaying the board. It starts out at one, but increasing this number allows the simulation to go faster so that one can see what the board will look like in advanced stages. Putting an integer in the textfield and pressing enter will change this number.

Below that is a number, and a Reset button. This number simply shows what generation the simulation is on. Reset resets it back to 0.

The Step button steps the simulation forward a number of generations as indicated in the upper right hand corner, and redisplays the board. The Pause button toggles on and off the automatic stepping. The textfield next to that is a speed field for how fast the automatic stepping goes. Basically 20 for fast and 200 more for slow.

Rand Randomizes the cells firing states. Clear clears the cells firing states. Act1 and Act2 do nothing yet, but they will be used in future versions of the program.

Finally, the Add Button. Clicking on the board itself will either change what type of cell appears in that spot, or it will change the state of that spot. Clicking the add button determines what happens when you click the board.

Note, both Life and Brain cells have three states. I'm not going over the rules for the simulations now other than to say that life normally only has two states on and off. I've added a red state, for diseased. A diseased cell behaves exactly like it was a normal cell. If any firing cell comes into contact with a diseased cell, it becomes diseased.

Here, do this. Start the program, and click the life button. now click the rand button. Click the step button twice (to get rid of mass amounts of first gen cells). Make sure the add type is on state change. Double click on a few cells on the board (to set the state to red, or diseased.) Now click pause, and watch as the disease spreads.