Some of these variations cause the populations to quickly die out, and others expand without limit to fill up the entire universe, or some large portion thereof. Conway tried many of these different variants before settling on these specific rules. There are, of course, as many variations to these rules as there are different combinations of numbers to use for determining when cells live or die. If the cell is dead, then it springs to life only in the case that it has 3 live neighbors.If the cell is alive, then it stays alive if it has either 2 or 3 live neighbors.For each generation of the game, a cell's status in the next generation is determined by a set of rules. Afterwards, the rules are iteratively applied to create future generations. The second generation evolves from applying the rules simultaneously to every cell on the game board, i.e. The initial pattern is the first generation. Neighbors of a cell are cells that touch that cell, either horizontal, vertical, or diagonal from that cell. The status of each cell changes each turn of the game (also called a generation) depending on the statuses of that cell's 8 neighbors. The Game of Life (an example of a cellular automaton) is played on an infinite two-dimensional rectangular grid of cells.

Endless space 2 ships disappear