Bevy Cellular Automaton

bevy_life is a generic plugin for cellular automaton. From the classic 2D Conway’s game of life to WireWorld and 3D rules, the plugin is completely generic and dynamic.

See:

• Game of life variations
• Wireworld implementation (see this lib's implementation)

Bevy versions

The main branch follows the released version of bevy but I provide the bevy-main branch to follow the main branch of bevy

How to use

Add a CellularAutomatonPlugin to your bevy app:

A CellularAutomatonPlugin<C, S> has two generic types:

• C -> Any type implementing Cell, defining the coordinate system
• S -> Any type implementing CellState, defining the simulation rules.

You may add as many generic CellularAutomatonPlugin as wished, the lib provides some implementations like:

• GameOfLife2dPlugin
• GameOfLife3dPlugin
• ImmigrationGame2dPlugin
• ImmigrationGame3dPlugin
• RainbowGame2dPlugin
• RainbowGame3dPlugin
• WireWorld2dPlugin
• WireWorld3dPlugin
• CyclicColors2dPlugin
• CyclicColors3dPlugin

Then you may use bevy as usual and add impl Cell and impl CellState components to the entities. The lib provides some implementations like MooreCell2d or MooreCell3d for cells and ConwayCellState, WireWorldCellState, etc for states.

You may implement your own cells (coordinate system) and states (rules) as you want, the cellular automaton system is completely dynamic and generic.

For more information you may look at some examples:

• The Classic examples showcase the provided implementations
• the Rock Paper Scissor defines custom rules.
• the wireworld repository

Pausing

Inserting a SimulationPause resource will pause the simulation, removing it wil resume the it.

Parallel execution and batching

Inserting a SimulationBatch resource will allow parallel computation of cells with custom batch sizes.

Cargo Features

No feature is required for the plugin to work and the main traits Cell and CellState are always available. But you may enable the following features

• 2D (enabled by default): Enables 2D types like:
  • MooreCell2d (square cell with 8 neighbors)
  • NeumannCell2d (square cell with 4 neighbors)
  • HexagonCell2d (hexagon cell with 6 neighbors)
  • plugin presets: GameOfLife2dPlugin, ImmigrationGame2dPlugin, RainbowGame2dPlugin, WireWorld2dPlugin, CyclicAutomaton2dPlugin
• 3D: Enables 3D types like:
  • MooreCell3d (cube cell with 26 neighbors)
  • NeumannCell3d (cube cell with 6 neighbors)
  • plugin presets: GameOfLife3dPlugin, ImmigrationGame3dPlugin, RainbowGame3dPlugin, WireWorld3dPlugin, CyclicAutomaton3dPlugin
• auto-coloring (Example or debug purpose):
  • Enables CellStateMaterials resource to contain material handles
  • The CellState type now requires to build a CellStateMaterials
  • All CellState components with materials will be colored according to their type.

Disclaimer

This is probably not the fastest rust implementation of a cellular automaton in rust. For example, using Gosper's HashLife a classic game of life could be much faster.

This library aim is to be generic and dynamic, so that you can integrate cellular automata to any project in bevy, with any rules, in 2D or 3D.

Example projects

Wire World

The wireworld-rs project uses bevy_life and wireworld rules to simulate electrical systems.

Internal Examples

For every example pressing space reloads the board.

Note: adding the release flag increases performance for examples

2D Game of life

Run cargo run --example 2d_game_of_life --features auto-coloring

2D Immigration game

Run cargo run --example 2d_immigration_game --features auto-coloring

2D Rainbow game

Run cargo run --example 2d_rainbow_game --features auto-coloring

2D Cyclic colors

Run cargo run --example 2d_cyclic_colors --features auto-coloring

2D Rock paper scissor

This example showcases how to define custom rules

Run cargo run --example 2d_rock_paper_scissor

3D Game of life (4555 rule)

Run cargo run --example 3d_game_of_life --features "3D auto-coloring" --no-default-features