A command-line program written in C that simulates a cellular automaton with rules based on Rock, Paper, Scissors.
- Each cell in a grid can be in one of 3 states - representing Rock, Paper, or Scissors (represented in code as 0, 1, and 2 respectively).
- Cells consider their 8 immediate neighbors (Moore neighborhood).
- Like RPS, each state is 'weak' to another state and 'strong' against another.
- If a cell's neighbours have enough cells that it is 'weak'against (determined by the THRESHOLD and RANDOM_THRESHOLD_MODIFIER values), it will be 'conquered' into that state.
- This ruleset creates spiral waves of repeating captures.
There are 5 global parameters that can be tinkered at the top of rps.c to change the behaviour of the automata. They are as follows:
GRIDXSIZE - The number of cells horizontally on the grid.
GRIDYSIZE - The number of cells vertically on the grid.
THRESHOLD - The number of neighbours that need to be 'strong' against a given cell for it to become 'conquered'.
RANDOM_THRESHOLD_MODIFIER - Before evaluating if a cell changes state, a number between 0 and this parameter will be generated and added to the threshold for each cell for each step. Setting this parameter to a non-zero value will make the CA stochastic.
SET_SEED - Set to -1 by default to use a random seed. Set to any other integer to set your own seed.
At threshold sums around 4 - like with 3 THRESHOLD and 1 RANDOM / 2 THRESHOLD and 2 RANDOM, you observe the spiral wave behaviour.
At low threshold sums like 2, you observe cells rapidly flickering between the 3 states. (Not shown due to concerns with flashing images)
At high threshold values with no RANDOM, you observe cells crystallizing immediately into equilibrium within a few generations.
An old project retooled for a university assignment.