Rainbow Life Game guide

We presuppose some knowledge of John Conway's Game of Life and the Black&White Life Game.

The ideas behind the Rainbow Life Game build on the notion of two-colour game introduced in the Black&White Game.

To repeat: A newborn cell gets that colour which is in majority among the three parent cells.

This means that a new white cell may have two white parents and one black. In the Rainbow Life Game this heritage will be evident from the colouring and a corresponding new cell in this game will consequently get a light gray colour reflecting the genes of the two white and the single black parent. Some generations later this cell may become a parent and thereby spread its combination of genes to its offspring.

By using the RGB colour system it is simple mathematics to compute the correct colour of any newborn cell. The rule is that any cell gets that colour which is the mathematical mean of its parents' colours in the RGB system.

The result may be rather spectacular since the program allows choices of cell colours and background colour.

1. Choose side length. (Try 9 as a starter.)
2. Press 'enter 1st colour' and click on the game field to get an initial pattern.
3. Press 'enter 2nd colour' and repeat the process.
4. Choose the three colours from the pulldown menus.
   Don't forget to press the 'submit colours' button after the three choices.
   (Note that the default colours are those used in the B&W Life Game. If you are happy with these colours you can skip this step.)
5. Press 'next' to start.

Don't worry about the colours in the initialization phase. Your chosen colours will show after the first 'next' click.

• At any point in the game you can change size (side length) and colours.
• You can also enter new 1st and 2nd colour cells. If you do this in the middle of the game the living cells will turn up light blue during the initialization phase. After a new 'next' click the old colours will return.
• By pressing 'clear' you erase the game and can start all over again.
  
• You can choose the number of generations that will run before the game stops. (The default value is 1). Just enter your chosen number under 'number of generations' and press 'submit'.
• Finally, by pressing 'colour indices' you get a list of the current colour indices of the non-white cells of your pattern. The indices are presented in read-write order. Index 1 means black and 0 white.