Evolving Interesting Initial Conditions for Cellular Automata of the Game of Life Type
Manuel Alfonseca
Escuela Politécnica Superior
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 28049 Spain
manuel.alfonseca@uam.es
Francisco José Soler Gil
Universidad de Sevilla, Spain
and
Technische Universität Dortmund, Germany
soler@uni-bremen.de
Abstract
The use of a genetic algorithm to obtain "interesting" initial conditions for cellular automata of the family of Conway's Game of Life is described in this paper. The conditions have been selected so as to maximize the number of gliders, R-pentominoes, and similar structures generated during the execution of the automata. Besides the original Game of Life rules, we have tested automata with similar rules, such as HighLife and B38S23, as well as mixed and time-dependent rules. We have concluded that the temporal invariance of the rules of these automata does not seem to be a requirement for the existence of the selected structures.
