Life Links

There are many excellent pages about the Game of Life. I've tried here to pick out some that have large pattern collections you can experiment with. Most of these have further links to explore as well.

To see any pattern from these collections grow, copy it to the clipboard and paste it into Winlife32. All known pattern formats can be interpreted, including the various dialects of XLife (usually looks like an ASCII art representation of the pattern, interspersed with commands), RLE (random-looking strings of digits and letters), and ProLife (which can only be read from a file with the .PLF filetype).

Pattern Collections

• David Bell's page - many collections, especially of spaceships
• Dean Hickerson's Life page - many collections including exotic large patterns (e.g. prime number generator)
• Mark Niemiec's encyclopaedic object and glider synthesis collection
• Jason's Life Page

Other Game of Life Information (including many collections)

• Paul Callahan's page - general information as well as pointers to many pattern collections
• H. Koenig's Game of Life Information
• Robert Wainwright's page including the original 1971 LIFELINE magazine which stimulated my interest in Life and prompted me to write my original PDP-8 program
• Achim's Game of Life page
• Stephen Silver's Life page including the comprehensive Life Lexicon of terms relating to the Game of Life (including many patterns)
• Tony Finch's Life Implementation page, which summarises and gives pointers for various approaches to efficient implementations of Life. His own method is very similar to the one used in Winlife 32, although the two were developed independently.