James Conway published the Game of Life in the 1970s. It is a computer science programming and mathematical curiosity. There are many implementations. For an introduction to Conway's Game of Life, go to this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_Life
If you do seeButtons, etc, but you do not see a Game of Life
window in the upper left corner of your display, you may need to install
Java 3D into your JRE and the Java 3D Plugin to your Browser.
If you navigate away from this page or if you close the Game
of Life 3D window, you must RESTART YOUR BROWSER in order to open
the Game of Life 3D again.
An easier, faster solution is to download the Life3D Java Application and install it on your machine. When the file download is complete, unzip it to a folder and refer to the "ReadMe" file. The application lets you run the Game of Life in 3D without your browser and without an Internet connection.
HELP info
for the 3D Game of Life. (This should
probably be included as application "help" in some future release.)
Cells are either "occupied/alive" or "empty/dead." Empty cells with the correct number of live adjoining cells have new life in the next generation. Live cells will "die" from either over crowding or from loneliness.
Certain
patterns are stable; others can migrate; and
still others continually spawn.
Press one
of the "Demo" buttons and then watch what
happens in the display after you press the "Run" or the "OneStep"
button.
This 3D version implements the classic "rules of life" in a limited three dimensional cube. The cube is populated with a grid-work of smaller spheres. Each of the spheres is colored either pale translucent blue (empty/dead) or bright semi-opaque green (occupied/alive.) The entire structure can be rotated to change the viewer's perspective. Click and drag within the cube to rotate it. A GUI window provides the user interface to the the 3D object. You can change the state of any particular cell with the x, y, z selection buttons.
This applet requires moderate CPU and graphics resources. If the action seems erratic, use the "Step" feature.
As noted above, there are many implementations of Conway's Game of Life. There are relatively few 3D versions. For an excellent version (which does not require the Java 3D libraries) visit this page: http://www.ibiblio.org/e-notes/Life/Game.htm