Game of life

It’s Alive

Decided to see if I could create a script that would use the rules from John Conway’s game of life into blender, thought process and code below.

Clear pre-existing objects

Create object grid

• create_grid(width, length, height, collection)

  • Collection = name of collection

• No output

Set all objects to 0 scale

• zero_size(collection)

  • Collection = name of collection

• No output

Create object pattern

• object_locations(collection)

  • Collection = name of collection

• Output:

  • Dict of (objectName : objectLocationVectors)

• location_generation(target)

  • Target = string of object name

• Output:

  • List of objectLocationVectors for objects surrounding the target

• object_config_two(shell, objVectors)

  • Shell = output of location_generation

  • objVectors = output from object_locations

    • Removes some items from the shell(list)

    • For any remaining LocationVector in the list, if this value appears in objVectors then its corresponding key is used to select the object and re-set its scale to 1

  • No output

the variables ‘window’, ‘cross’, ‘vertline’, ‘pillers1’ and ‘pillers2’ are preset arrangements of a grid of 3 * 3 * 3 cubes that let me quickly switch between starting configurations of blocks, in the below code example the arrangement of ‘pillers2’ is being used.

For each object in collection get a scale value for surrounding objects

• get_obj_scale(target, objVectors)

  • Target = string of object name

  • objVectors = output from object_locations

    • Generates a list of locationVectors surrounding the target

    • If these locationVectors are found in objVectors, the keys are added to a temp list

    • For each name in the temp list, the corresponding object is selected, its scale is recorded and added to a total

    • The Target : ScaleTotal are then added to a dictionary

  • Output dict of (objectName : scaleScore) - for single object

• object_scale_values(objVectors)

  • objVectors = output from object_locations

    • For each key in objVectors, get_object_scale() is used to get the score for this object, the key and scaleScore are then added to a master dictionary 

  • Output dict of (objectName :scaleScore) - for all objects

Based on the scale update the scale of each object in the collection

• object_scale_action(objScores)

  • objScores = output from object_scale_values()

    • For each objectName/Target in objScores, select the object

    • Get its current scale

    • Based on this and its score value, either set its scale to 0 or 1

  • Output dict of actions, only used for debug, action is already taken in the function.

the object name ‘Cube.364’ passed to the loc_list variable is the central object / cube of the ‘pillers2’ configuration set above, and so is also the centre of the starting location from which the pattern evolves. In the above video and in this code example the centre object for the overall grid was chosen, though this is not a requirement.