EVLU

This first part is well-baked background info; feel free to skip.

The "game" for computers known as LIFE uses a grid of squares and a population of spots that occupy some of the cells of the grid. The rules of the game specify how the arrangement of spots affect each other, from one "generation" to the next, as follows:

1. Any spot that has zero or one neighboring spots will die of loneliness (or perhaps overexposure to predators).

2. Any spot with two or three neighboring spots will continue to survive into the next generation.

3. Any spot with four or more neighboring spots will die of starvation due to overcrowding.

4. Any empty cell with exactly three neighboring spots will be a "birth cell" (two parents and -- ? a midwife? a wet-nurse? both in one, maybe!).

The entire grid is scanned, and data about the consequences is computed and saved. When the "generation" is invoked, the content of the grid is filled with the consequences. It has to be done carefully, because one spot that disappears may have contributed to (or prevented) the birth of another.

As the generations pass by, many patterns of spots tend to die out altogether, while some stabilize into various persistent shapes, others produce dynamically stable formations, some of which can move across the grid, and so on. Below is a link, so you can sample it on-line, if you wish.

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LIFE has been around for about 30 years, and is quite popular among mathematicians. As a pastime, it can intrigue most people for a short time. But it is not a true game....

EVLU is a variant of LIFE that I thought of in 1977, that is intended to be a true game. It features competition, strategy, and chance. As originally conceived, it involves two separate populations of spots on the square grid (distinguished by color, perhaps). Each player controls one set of spots, and in-between the generation-calculations, the players take turns moving the arrangements of spots into new patters. One reason to do that is to enhance the numbers of births that occur. Another reason is that you can move your spots over to where the other player is trying to enhance his births -- and interfere. The two sets of spots are considered different genera, and cannot interbreed. The game ends when one genus becomes extinct.

The game is called EVLU because within each population, the genus can accommodate several "levels" of species. The initial population is all low-level, but higher-level mutations can occur at random among the births. These evolutionarily advanced mutants have greater mobility and survivabiltiy than their forebears, so you want to breed them to get as many as possible.

Over the years some aspects of EVLU have mutated. Because it is easy to breed so many critters that they start to die in droves due to overpopulation, faster than you can move them out of the way of each other, I introduced aging. The lower-level animals die after a couple generations, regardless of how many neighbors they have, while the higher-level animals can live rather longer.

Next, because the pieces can be moved about, it is more rational to use a hexagon grid than a square grid, because hexagons allow distances in various directions to be more accurately paced off. But a hex grid had its own side-effects, making it more difficult to create birth-cells next to "parents" that will themselves continue to survive. It was necessary to modify the loneliness rule so that animals with only one neighbor would continue to survive. And the default idea of aging became something that can be turned off.

Only a computer can keep track of all the details in such a game as LIFE or EVLU. Eventually I learned enough computer programming to make it work, and in fact have written 3 different versions over the years. In that sense only, then, this idea might be called "baked". However, what if people decided that it wasn't so simple in concept, or easy to play, or whatever? Then it falls back to the "half-baked" category, doesn't it? And so a description of it belongs here, right?.

Anyway, it shouldn't cost anybody very much to find out (wear and tear on your computer, and the price of Internet access, that's all). The most recent version of the game is pure freeware, and consists of one executable file, about 140K in size. It should work on Windows95 and later versions of that operating system. I am sorry about the fact that I do not yet know enough to make the game work over a network, so those who want to compete will mostly have to sit at the same computer. Someday... (The state of the game can be saved and emailed, if one is desperate to play with a remote partner. Be warned: a vast number of emails will be needed!)

Well, if you choose to fetch the game via the link below, I hope you have fun playing it. (You might find it appropriate to create a directory where you would put the executable file. When the game runs it will create/maintain a simple configuration file, in the same directory as itself -- which is also the default directory for any saved-game files.) If EVLU needs improving, I'll be able to do a better job of it with your feedback. The current version does support up to 6 players (but has no AI), and a decent variety of initial-configuration options can be chosen. Thanks!