Guns, Factories and Puffer Trains.


Watch these life forms in action.

What are guns?

Guns are basically life forms that constantly 'produce' more and more cells, like a gun continuously shooting bullets. It can be quite interesting to place life forms in the path of the gun's 'bullets' and see how it reacts.

            00                      
           0                        
          0             0           
 0        0            00           
00--------0               00        
           0              000      0
            00---------   00 -----00
                       00           
                        0
In this diagram the dashes show the length of the 'empty space' between the cells, with each dash representing one empty cell. The basic configuration for a 'glider gun'. It realeases its first glider at the 40th tick and the gun 'oscillates' and releases a glider every 30th turn after that. It is NOT an oscillator however, because it constantly releases gliders which extend furthur and furthur and no longer make it identical to its previous generations.

                                  0       
                                  0 0     
0                     0 0         00      
0 0                   00            |     
00      0 0            0            |     
  |     00             |            |     
  |      0             |            |     
  |      |             |            |     
  |      |             |            000   
  |      |             |            0     
  000    |             00     ------ 0    
  0      |             0 0   0        |   
   0-----00            0    00        |   
         0 0-- 0       |    0 0       |   
         0    00    00 |     |        |   
              0 0---0 0      |        |   
                    0        |        |   
                             |         00 
                             |         0 0
                             |         0  
                             |            
                             |            
                            000           
                            0             
                             0
This diagram shows how 13 gliders can crash to form a glider gun. This is at generation 0. Furthur generations are shown below.

                          0         
                          0 0       
         0                 0 0      
         00                0  0---00
    00    00               0 0    00
00  00    000             0 0       
00--00--- 00 ------x x----0         
         00         xx              
         0          x
Here is the 13 gliders after 100 ticks. The glider released is denoted by the x's. This pattern repeats itself every 30 ticks, with one new glider added, as shown below:

                          0         
                          0 0       
         0                 0 0      
         00                0  0---00
    00    00               0 0    00
00  00    000             0 0       
00--00--- 00 ------x x----0         
         00         xx     |        
         0          x      |        
                           |        
                           |        
                           |        
                           |        
                           x        
                            xx      
                           xx