During the last Leipzig Games Convention, Sony presented some game titles in advance which, I think, set the trend for a new games generation. I personally endorse this decision (which already started other game companies like Nintendo with its Wii) to create new playing experiences instead of using the so boring shot-them-up scheme (both in 1st and 3rd person).
Of all the videos put in the PlayStation Store web, the most attracting to me was the trailer of EyePet.
Eyepet, is, of course, a virtual pet. It only exists within your TV and your PS3. You can touch it (her?), stroke it, change its look, hairdress, etc. or just create some toy for it (by drawing it on a card) and see how she plays with it.
In a previous post about the singularity, I wrote that one of the signs of the coming of singularity is the mix of real and virtual things, like this example.
In short, EyePet es a very interesting experiment of augmented reality (I’ll write about some day). I suggest you to watch the video.
As happened with other topics, long ago I wanted to write about this one: Artificial life and John Conway’s Life Game.
If you already happen to know about it or have just searched the internet, I’m afraid I’m not going to tell you something new, or maybe I am: John Horton Conway is a mathematician born in Liverpool, United Kingdom in 1937. One of his most known (and he has worked many) field are mathematic games, like Sprouts Game, or the Game of Life I’m going to explain here.
Life game is played on a reticulated board or grid that is supposed to be infinite in extension. Obviously, this cannot exist in practice, but is ok to use one large enough. Each cell of this grid is in one of two states: live or dead, represented with different colors (here white and black respectively).
This “game” is a zero-player game, meaning that its evolution is determined by its initial state, needing no input from human players.
The game is turn-based. At each step (also called generation) every cell in the board is examined and its new state calculated. Finally, when all the new states are known, the board is updated.
The cell next state is calculated following 3 rules that although really simple (as it happen on most Conway’s games) can lead to surprisingly complex configurations:
If a cell is alive and the number of alive neighbours is less than 2, it will die by isolation and will be removed from the board in the next turn.
If a cell is alive and the number of alive neighbours is greater than 3 it will die by overcrowding (it will be removed from the board the next turn).
A free (dead) cell which happens to have 3 (and only 3) alive neighbours will came into life the next turn.
These three simple rules creates a chaotic system: changing just one cell state in a configuration can lead to dramatically different results which ranges from total extinction (empty board) to stable oscillating population or even more interesting life forms.
I’ve developed a simulator for the game of life. It uses the Firefox (of which canvas), and it should work ok on every browser (Firefox, Safari, Opera…) except Internet Explorer (where the emulation is slow and rather buggy). If you’re using IE, please switch to Firefox to try it. Anyway, here you are:
![[about]](http://www.boriel.com/wp-content/themes/zx-spectrum2/images/about.png)
![[+]](http://www.boriel.com/wp-content/themes/zx-spectrum2/images/pit.png)
