GOL-002 · technical companion
Hexagonal Slumber
Life moves onto a six-neighbor honeycomb with a rule composer for survival, permanent death, and temporary sleep.
At a glance
- geometry
- Hexagonal lattice
- neighborhood
- Axial · 6 edge-adjacent cells
- states
- Dead / alive / sleep 1–5
- update
- Synchronous generations
- renderer
- Canvas 2D
What to explore
The game should make lattice geometry and temporary absence visibly consequential. Sleep must be a causal state with duration, not a color applied to an ordinary dead cell, and the composer must let visitors explore survival, sleep-trigger counts, and sleep length while fixed B3 birth remains legible.
Rules, update order and replay
The world uses point-topped hexagons addressed through axial coordinates and stored in offset rows. Each position has exactly six edge neighbors in the interior. State is dead, alive, or asleep with one through five complete rounds remaining. A dead cell is born with exactly three living neighbors. A living cell survives on selected counts; otherwise a selected sleep count and positive duration starts sleep, and all other outcomes die. Sleeping cells do not count as living, ignore their neighbors while counting down, and wake alive after the configured number of complete generations. Steps are synchronous. Boundaries may be finite or toroidal. Replay requires board state, rules, generation, field profile, topology, and the seed/density or selected starter. Reset rebuilds the start with every cell initially awake or dead.
Reading the simulation
Point-topped rendering makes the six equal edge relationships visible. Living, sleeping, and dead populations are reported in text, and the rule summary names survival, sleep triggers, and duration. Because the unusual causal state is directly encoded and counted down in the field rather than hidden in another layer, a separate selected-cell inspector is not required. Canvas instructions, topology, state legend, and control labels carry the non-color explanation.
Reproduce an opening
Download the example above, open the simulation, expand the controls, then use Share & reproduce → Import JSON. The example uses authored rules and a fixed seeded starting field; it is independent of the site’s editable default composition. Import starts paused at Step zero.
Share links and JSON reproduce the configured starting conditions, including hidden layers rebuilt by Reset. They do not save an evolved board, hand-painted cells, speed or display preferences. Determinism applies to the same rule version and Step sequence; real-time playback rates vary by device.
Larger fields and more involved rules can reduce playback speed. Read the configuration format and automated-access guide for compatibility details.