When I was in school I wrote a life simulation.
I had a neat idea for a prank to pull with it too, but I never actually bothered to code it.
My idea was this.
I would make an editor which would allow me to draw to the game board. On this board I would write a message using the little critters. Then I would run the simulation backwards from that point for a minute, and then record that point to restart it from later. Then when my teacher ran the simulation after a minute my message would appear, and then dissapear. :-)
Thinking back on it now though, I'm not sure if they would have worked. It is possible that the game is not time reversiable, and that though you could run backwards from a certain board configuration, running forwards again would not reproduce the original board state because some of the configurations of points (which I created manually) would violate the rules of the game. Part of my message might appear for example, but there might be large gaps in the middle, or bits along the edges missing.
I had a neat idea for a prank to pull with it too, but I never actually bothered to code it.
My idea was this.
I would make an editor which would allow me to draw to the game board. On this board I would write a message using the little critters. Then I would run the simulation backwards from that point for a minute, and then record that point to restart it from later. Then when my teacher ran the simulation after a minute my message would appear, and then dissapear. :-)
Thinking back on it now though, I'm not sure if they would have worked. It is possible that the game is not time reversiable, and that though you could run backwards from a certain board configuration, running forwards again would not reproduce the original board state because some of the configurations of points (which I created manually) would violate the rules of the game. Part of my message might appear for example, but there might be large gaps in the middle, or bits along the edges missing.