Cellular Automata

Herein is a simulator for elementary cellular automata, written in Rust using the Bevy game engine.

The simulator begins paused, using a random seed and rule (unless overridden with command line options).

• Press the space bar to unpause; when the simulator is running, press the space bar to pause.
• When paused, click any cell in the bottom row to toggle its state, i.e., alive -> dead, dead -> alive.
• At any time, type a new rule, specified as a Wolfram code in [0,255], to altar the evolution of the automaton.
• Hold the right shift key to display the frames per second (FPS).

To run the WASM build on GitHub Pages, go here. Note that this is not expected to work on mobile, so use a desktop browser instead. Also, you will need to click the WASM canvas to transfer focus; key presses won't be detected before this.

Building

$ cargo build --release

Running

To run natively:

$ cargo run

Command Line Arguments

When running the application natively from the command line, the following parameters are available:

$ cargo run -- --help
Fun with cellular automata! Set the first generation with a known seed and/or
rule, or let the program choose randomly. Watch the automaton evolve, and
influence its evolution with the keyboard and mouse

Usage: cellular-automata [OPTIONS]

Options:
  -r, --rule <RULE>  The rule, specified as a Wolfram code between 0 and 255,
                     inclusive. If unspecified, the rule will be chosen randomly
  -s, --seed <SEED>  The first generation, specified as a 64-bit integer that
                     represents the complete population. Lower numbered bits
                     correspond to cells on the right of the visualization. If
                     unspecified, the first generation will be chosen randomly
  -h, --help         Print help

If rule is unspecified, then a rule will be chosen randomly. Likewise, if seed is unspecified, then a seed will be chosen randomly.

Query Parameters

When running the application from a web browser, the following query parameters are available:

rule=<RULE>          The rule, specified as a Wolfram code between 0 and 255,
                     inclusive. If unspecified, the rule will be chosen randomly
seed=<SEED>          The first generation, specified as a 64-bit integer that
                     represents the complete population. Lower numbered bits
                     correspond to cells on the right of the visualization. If
                     unspecified, the first generation will be chosen randomly

For example, the following URL illustrates running rule #206 on an initial population of one (at index 12, counting up from 0 on the right): https://xebia-functional.github.io/cellular-automata/?rule=206&seed=4096