Spore Life
Game of Life with Dormancy

Claudius Gros, Daniel Nevermann, Jay Lennon

Spore Game introduces dormancy into Conway's Game of Life.

Interactive Simulation App

One click for a living cell, two clicks for a spore.

survival rate for spores

number of steps to run

waiting time (ms)

Periodic Spore Patterns (α=1)

Different grid sizes

Transition Rules

Spore Life is based on the notion that the number of living cells in a 8-cell neighborhoud can be taken as an indicator of local enviromental conditions.

Organisms transform into a spore when enviromental conditions are borderline, viz when only a single living neighbor is present.
Spores resuscitate when enviromental conditions improved, viz when having two living neighbors.

Spore Life is markovian cellular automaton. Transitions take place as a function of the number of alive neighbors, $N_L\in[0,8]$. A given cell can be dead, alive, or a spore (D/L/S).

Shallow vs. deep dormancy

The decay of spores is governed by a parameter $\alpha\in[0,1]$.

S → D with probability (1-α)

The decay process is applied individually after each update step. Shallow/deep dormancy correspond to small/large $\alpha$.

$\alpha=0$ leads to the original game of life.
$\alpha=1$ corresponds to determistic rules. Periodic patterns are then possible.

Spore Life contains a stochastic component for $\alpha\ne0/1$.