Toys
Things with rules, left running. I’m interested in emergent complexity: systems where nobody wrote the behaviour you end up watching. This page is where I put the ones small enough to fit in a browser tab.
Forest fire
Trees grow on empty ground. Very rarely one is struck by lightning. Fire spreads to anything adjacent, then burns out and leaves bare ground behind. Four rules, no physics, and the distribution of fire sizes comes out resembling the real thing. Move the sliders.
Eventually
- An editor for the rules themselves, so the grid isn't stuck being a forest. Wolves and rabbits was the other classic.
- A word generator for constructed languages, like one I rebuilt as an Android app at a university hackathon.