Standard

The rule the app opens on

The 3D Game of Life starts on this rule, with a sphere of 123 cells in a 15×15×15 box. It is the rule the project's first version shipped with. It is not one of the two rules Carter Bays proposed in 1987 (Life 4555 and Life 5766): it gives birth more easily, so a world grows and keeps moving, which makes a livelier first view.

What it does

The sphere breaks open and the box fills with churning structure that does not settle. In the 15×15×15 box it is still changing after 300 generations, with about 28% of the cells alive. From 20 random fills (15% of cells alive) in a 30×30×30 box, not one run settled or died out within 300 generations; each was still churning at about a quarter full.

That is the difference from Bays' rules. His first test of a 3D Game of Life is that random starts settle down instead of running on forever, and this rule does not pass it. It makes a world to watch rather than one that freezes.

Open the default world → From a random fill →

How the rule works

• Each cell has 26 neighbours: every cell that shares a face, an edge or a corner with it (the Moore neighbourhood).
• An empty cell comes alive when 4 or 5 of its neighbours are alive.
• A live cell stays alive when 4 to 6 of its neighbours are alive; otherwise it dies.

Picking it in the app restarts the world from the Sphere pattern.

Notation

B lists the neighbour counts at which an empty cell is born, S those at which a live cell survives, and C the number of states. How to read a rule

More classic rules

• Stable B4/S4-5
• Chaotic B3-6/S2-5
• Die-Off B5-6/S5-6
• Explosive B2-6/S1-6
• Crystal B5/S3-5
• Pulsating B4-6/S3-4
• Maze B3-4/S3-4
• Sparse B6/S5

All 30 rules · From 2D to 3D: why Conway's rule needs changing in 3D