That’s true for all finite state machines with finite memory, regardless of the rules of boundary conditions 
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I think i get what you mean. It would definately be cool if the noteseq allowed wrapping of it’s life simulation (and if it supported multiple cv settable patterns i’d never use the RCM piano roll, noteseq would just be superior).
Honestly I cannot reply on that. What I know as per my experience is that the behaviour of the cells in Life CA (there must even be a ruleset, I have to dig into it) in a toroid world can lead to a moving group of cells known as glider.
I totally agree that this is another stable configuration but I think that this is a little bit far from what I was pointing at (or is it?); you can test it on the module.
If you play a glider (or a glider creator, check the links I have put to see what I am talking about) in the module you obtain far more random and interesting sounds rather than if you play a block.
And, accordingly to the researches of Richard F. Voss and John Clarke, despite the “glider in a toroid world” is (taken by itself with nothing added to it) pretty boring being pretty predictable, it is undoubtly better than the sounds created by the block!
Hence my proposal of a toroid world for the module and the use of colors.
Also, I cannot stress this enough, having the possibility to save and load the states of the CA, allows to load preconfigured states from all over the web; there are gazillions of people who have draw amazing things with Life, it would be absolutely nice if it could be possible just to load them rather than draw them by hand. And most of the times, the save files are *.txt or *.csv files.
That’s all 
I’d forgotten until just now that there’s a module by qwelk that does a kind of one dimensional life simulation. It’s called “Chaos”.
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Me, on the onther hand, had totally forgot the forum. Facebook is pretty intoxicating. The plugin you mentioned is amazing! Thanks for the suggestioin, @dag2099! 
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Hi SkwareUawe,
Great minds think alike! I’ve actually done work on implementing Langton’s Ant in VCV Rack as my first Rack module. Finding this post has inspired me to re-engage with the project. In all honesty it has been gathering dust for the last six months. 
Also, good call PaulPiko! I actually lifted parts of Jeremy Wen’s NoteSeq for this project (with attribution of course). Below is a screenshot of early development. I’m calling it Aunty Langton’s Musical Ant.
I’ve actually got a video catpure of it in action too. I’ll add a link to a youtube vid shortly.
Thanks for spurring me back into action on this! The implementation is mostly complete, at least for a first release. Now to properly design the panel so it’s not so goddamn ugly
Here’s that vid: Musical Ant - Mystical Ant Patch
Cheers!
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You should probably go with a custom Widget that renders rectangles with nvgRect, since drawing 1000 LEDs is CPU intensive.
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Yep, agreed! I have already made the change to using nvgRect Andrew (The LED lighting was pretty though!). The pic and vid are of an old version.
Thanks for putting together this amazing tool and open sourcing it by the way!
Cheers,
Alex
Hmm, I like the shiny green LEDs.
Is there a possibility of allow a degree of programmed behaviour?
Heh. They look nicer than rectangles, that’s true.
A degree of programmed behaviour is certainly possible. I’ve seen a VCV module that had a text box for entering small code blocks that affected the module. I forget the name though…
While possible, I prob won’t be including it. Need to stop adding bells and whistles and just finish the damn thing
Once I do, I’ll open the source on Github and then someone can try adding that functionality to it.
I have added little tweaks like a second ant. You can have the second “shadow” ant either mirroring or mimicking the primary ant’s behaviour. This can lead to some interesting reoccurring sequences that can themselves include the “highway” loop. Once you tinker with Langton’s Ant for a while you notice that there are may roads to the “highway”, so to speak =)
There are a couple of other potential ideas in there that aren’t in the vid. Anyway, now hopefully I’ve created some pressure for myself to finish it…
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This is a really great module, can not wait for it!
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Sounds like Frank Buss Formula. That is a very deep module. there are certain things that you just can’t do with anything else (even though it feels a bit like cheating).
Keep going. I guess the trick with a module like yours is to make it “abusable” i.e. introduce enough behaviour that it can be messed up so you don’t get exactly the same sequence every time. Like placeable blockers for the ant?
…Martinis, roller skates, cups of coffee, lines of coke, snakes, ladders, sleeping pills, skis, meth rocks, teleport booths…
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Some kind of a seed value?
I’m fairly sure that Langtons ant is deterministic. So you’d get the same piece of music every time all other things being equal. That’s why a placeable blocker might make things change.
By setting the Start Cell manually in the grid, then the outgoing result should be different?
Adding obstacles should be doable. Actually, I’m pretty sure there’s some code in Jeremy’s NoteSeq that does exactly that. It might just need to be uncommented in my code even 
@jue ant pickup-and-drop is a good idea too. I’ll look at that.
I may rethink the programmed behaviour slightly @dag2099. Have you seen the multiple colour extension mentioned here? WikiVisually
I want to know what L2NNL1L2L1 sounds like!
Panel update:
Hopefully starting Rack 1.0 migration in the next week or so! Can’t wait to use the new CV to MIDI module to easily output to a hardware synth
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Holy Skware Wave!
I’ve been away for a while and when I am back I see miracles happening here!
FIRST THING FIRST: I am sorry if I have been away for so long Too bad I had to deal with quite serious stuffs. I haven’t dug into your module yet but it looks juicy as hell!! Just give me time to scratch the rust away and gather the infos!
In any case… Hat off to you as well, sir! 