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reZolution

reZolution

reZolution is a cellular animation game similar to the Game of Life, originally developed by John Conway. It consists of a grid of populated cells and a set of rules which describe how to determine the population of successive generations of the cells. It extends the original idea of the Game of Life to encompass two opposing populations which battle each other to reach a target. The two populations sometimes co-exist, sometimes self-destruct, and sometimes wage epic battles for grid domination.  It's a guy thing.

How To Play

First, you might want to click on the DEMO button to get a flavor of reZolution. If a color dies out too soon for you, click on DEMO again. The cells are populated randomly within a small area of the demo grid. If you change the grid layout, the demo may not work so well.

To temporarily stop the game from running, click on STOP.

To resume a stopped game, or to begin running a new game, click on START.

Before you start a game, you need to set up the grid the way you want it. That means arranging the barriers the way you want them, setting up one or more target cells if desired, and creating a seed population of blue and/or red cells. This is done by selecting tools from the color choice box at the bottom left of the applet, and then clicking and dragging on the cells you want to change. The choices you have are:

1. BLUE: blue is one of the two distinct color populations (red is the other). When you choose blue and click and drag on empty cells, they are given a population of one blue (represented by light blue).
2. RED: along with blue, red is one of the two distinct color populations. When you choose red and click and drag on empty cells, they are given a population of one red (represented by light red).
3. ERASE: erases any cell population, barrier, or target when you click and drag in the cell grid. The erased cell will then appear white.
4. BARRIER: creates a black barrier in clicked cells that are empty.
5. TARGET: creates a target cell in clicked cells that are empty. You usually only want one of these, but you can have none, or as many as you want.

The box to the right of the color choice box is the step choice box. This box allows you to choose how many generations will pass before the game pauses. This can be useful in multiple-player variations of the game.

Next to that is the speed choice box.

The rest of the buttons are self-explanatory. The START button starts or resumes running the game. The STOP button stops the game. The CLEAR button clears the grid of its red and blue populations, but leaves barriers and targets. The generation (Gen:), blue and red counters on the right are just informative displays.

The Rules of reZolution

For those of you who really want to know, here is a basic outline of the rules:

1. In a 2D grid, each cell is either populated or unpopulated. Unpopulated cells can be barriers (represented by the color black), targets (white cells outlined in black), or just empty (white).
2. Barrier cells can never be populated by any other color, nor can they propogate or die out. They can only be manually erased.
3. Each populated cell contains a population of one of two possible colors, blue or red.
4. The shade of the color - blue or red - varies from light to dark, depending on how heavily populated the cell is.
5. The game ends when either: (a) all the cells become unpopulated or static; (b) all of one color dies out; (c) a target cell becomes populated; or, (d) make up your own rules for the end of a game. Only when a target cell becomes populated will the game actually stop running. Otherwise it will continue to calculate new generations until you stop it yourself.

The rules for selecting color are:

1. The population of a cell itself and all its neighbor cells are added up in the following way: blue populations are subtracted from the sum, and red populations are added to the sum.
2. If the population sum is positive then the cell may be populated by red, if it satisfies the population qualifications below. If the result is negative, the cell may be populated by blue, if it qualifies.

The population qualification rules are:

1. If the absolute value of the population sum divided by 3 is exactly one greater than the current cell population, the cell increases its population by one.
2. If the absolute value of the population sum divided by 3 is less than the current cell population, the cell population goes to zero.
3. If the absolute value of the population sum divided by 3 is equal to the current cell population, the cell population remains the same.
4. If the absolute value of the population sum divided by 3 is more than one greater than the current cell population, the cell population goes to zero.

Have fun.