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A Blast From the Past: Langton’s Ant in 3D

2020-09-08 John Winkelman

Langton's Ants in 3D

This is an update to a post from March 2, 2012.

From 2002 to around 2012 I devoted most of my creative energy to programming. I created well over a hundred visual toys and simple games, and kept the momentum going until a series of life events sucked the mental and emotional energy from me. When I got my life back I turned my creative energies to writing fiction and poetry, and my decade-plus of experiments in mathematics, geometry, cellular automata and game design fell by the wayside.  Most of those experiments were in Flash and though I still have the source code rebuilding them in Javascript would be an extremely time-consuming project.

But some of those experiments were in Javascript, particularly after I saw the writing on the wall for Flash and Actiosncript. This is one of those experiments – a 3D version of the Langton’s Ant cellular automation, created using hand-rolled Javascript, with an assist from the Three.js 3D rendering library.

Click here to access the Langton’s Ants in 3D experiment. Once there, you can right-click on the animation and select “save image as…” to take a screenshot of the Ant trail.

The original post from March 2, 2012, with code breakdown and explanation is here.

Here are a couple more screenshots from later iterations of the algorithm:

Langton's Ants in 3D

Langton's Ants in 3D

Posted in ProgrammingTagged cellular automata, Javascript, Langton's Ants

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Hi everyone - taking some time off to mourn the loss of half the country’s rights and status as free citizens in America.

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Talking to someone about an estranged adult child and their parent, and the person could not understand the child cutting the parent off because "if they die, wouldn't you feel terrible you never made peace?" And it's interesting because... (cont'd)

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