FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD56 → Cellspace: Cellular Automata Sandbox

Cellspace: Cellular Automata Sandbox

By loveapplegames

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall8763.1923
Fun9572.7924
Innovation114.3726
Theme9253.0223
Graphics9372.5825
Humor8862.2319
Mood10382.4022

Comments

scott-redrup 2024-10-11 20:20

This is such a cool idea, I loved learning about cellular automata! Unfortunately I just couldn't get anything to happen even after making a few rules :(

loveapplegames 2024-10-12 07:43

@scott-redrup it should be very easy to get something to move using the rules. Maybe you did not press the **Restart** button after your changes?

nikolas-van-rus 2024-10-12 08:12

A very interesting and unusual game, great idea!

kuroshima 2024-10-12 08:29

Very unusual game, level 6 is my favourite so far, but took me some time to understand the basics

marco-santos 2024-10-12 10:43

5 on innovation. well done

exa 2024-10-12 11:21

Wow it is so beautiful!!!Fantastic job!!

itskdog 2024-10-12 14:29

Very challenging. I like all the combinations and the setting of rules. Took awhile to know what to do and there is probably a lot you can do with this.

patomkin 2024-10-14 09:08

Not gonna lie, this is challenging, but this what makes it fun! Idea is quite innovative

thomas-bringer 2024-10-14 10:23

Nice, very nerdy, but very cool. Was looking through cellular automata recently when studying level generation techniques. More an interesting tool to simulate stuff than a game (not a bad thing!)

lakdjs 2024-10-14 10:43

Fun!

teddyreid 2024-10-14 12:12

This is awesome, easy 5 stars in innovation.

I've said last week in a blog comment here that I've been trying to gamify cellular automata for ages but can never come up with something that non-programmers would enjoy. I think this possibly falls into that criteria as well, but this is a good basis on which to build something fun.

A "simple" change that would make it more accessible could be rule definition templates you can apply that make various things happen without the player having to truly understand the ruleset.

ellaris 2024-10-14 19:14

Interesting concept, but it seemed to behaved weirdly, like I set a rule, pres restart several times, and get different results. It would also be nice to have a more friendly user interface.

ratly 2024-10-14 20:16

Hi fellow cellular automata maker! This was pretty fun and difficult, and I can see how this could turn into a game with objectives. It's cool to see how many different types of games and behaviors can be simplified to cellular automata, and it would be a nice tool to teach programming in a fun way.

wendel-scardua 2024-10-18 17:42

Hi, I got curious when I saw a post on the feed and started playing this, but I think I found 2 bugs.

First: on Level 2 I'm not able to pick the "~" for the rules, which seems to be required for a "solution". Unless the idea is to do some workaround solution with the other characters, but then it's too tricky for a Level *2*.

Captura de tela 2024-10-18 143901.png

Second: I tried playing Level 4, and apparently one of my rules moved X to the left, outside the grid, then the game stopped responding. I couldn't even press restart.

patbgames 2024-10-19 08:37

Very difficult, took me a while to understand how the rules work. It could have been much more appealing if the rules were more "graphical". I mean, if the menu on the right directly used images instead of o @ X ~ ...etc. I think this could lead to a very interesting game with objectives.

loveapplegames 2024-10-19 09:05

@wendel-scardua thanks for your response! About your bug reports: the first is not a bug, "follow the trail" just means following the ":". As regards the second, this is a bounds checking bug, causing the engine to crash, which I fixed now.

wendel-scardua 2024-10-19 12:08

@loveapplegames oh, okay then - i thought "follow the trail" meant "change rules so the ~ follows the : towards the o instead of spreading everywhere" 😅

someone 2024-10-20 16:17

Not quite sure what this is trying to be. Is it a game or not? There are levels that hint at objectives but nothing structured. It feels like you intended to make a game but made an editor instead. It could have been a cool game of figuring out some rules within a limited set to solve a specific objective. The follow the trail one came the closest to this.

The post jam IDE is a really cool toy. Still quite rough but good fun to mess around in.

death-bread 2024-10-22 17:59

Very cool entry! Setting up the rules took me some time to get used to, but then I had fun playing around in the different levels you included :)

thelastslowpoke 2024-10-23 19:09

Wow, such a cool engine. It would be amazing if there were some puzzle levels with clear win conditions that are detected by the game, and some constraints of what you could do. I'd love to melt my brain over that.

loveapplegames 2024-10-24 11:14

@thelastslowpoke Thanks for your feedback! Check out some games I made with the postcompo IDE:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/cellspace-cellular-automata-sandbox/cellspace-ide-update-create-and-share-complete-games-using-cellular-automata

mrspeaker 2024-10-24 21:24

I kicked myself for not thinking of doing something making this before! So simple, but really genius. I've played with cellular automata lots before, but never thought about expressing the rules as part of the UI. So cool! So much potential in your IDE: damn great idea!