wave: A multi-state two dimensional cellular automaton to simulate excitable medium (and more)

Author: Tobi Turing dev@fet.li

This repo contains a web-based editor to play around with cellular automatons. Originally born from the idea to implement a tristate cellular automaton using the Greenberg-Hastings algorithm. This CA can be used to simulate excitable medium (aka "waves").

Over time I have added different algorithms such as Game of Life and my own based on random neighborhood.

There are multiple parameters which can be tweaked, such as:

• algorithms:
  • GH: Greenberg-Hastings (default algo)
  • TT: Tobi Turing (similar to GH, but with random neighborhood)
  • GoL: Inspired by conway's game of life which by default uses 2 states, but more can be used.
• states:
  • 2 state (used for GoL), 0 represents a dead cell, 1 a cell which is alive
  • 3 state (used for GH), 0 is the media in resting state, 1 excited, 2 refractoring
  • 4+ state (just for fun, try to play with this)
• neighborhood:
  • von Neumann (4 neighbors, in direct cardinal direction)
  • Moore (8 neighbors, direct and diagonal)
  • Combination of von Neumann and Moore (alternates mode between cycles)
  • random (actually Moore, but neighbours are chosen randomly)
  • Note: neighborhood has a radius attribute, which expands the reach, 1 is default
• level of detail:
  • this parameter defines how many cells are simulated, depending on your hardware it might be really slow:
    • 1 means 4 cells, so 2^(2*1)
    • 2 means 16 cells, so 2^(2*2)
    • n means 2^(2n)
    • 9 -> 262144 cells might be to much for most CPUs, so by default we use 4 -> 256 fields, this works well even with portable phones

The matrix canvas is always initiated to have a multiple of 2^2n cells so minimal visual smoothing happens.

Enjoy!