It is often said, that all programmers should be able to write a "hello world" program in any programming language after a few glances on that language (And quicksort after a few more glances).
As the Conway's Game of Life is Turing complete (so it qualifies as a general-purpose programming language), the problem is self-explanatory:
Create a "Hello World!" application using only Conway's Game of Life! The only valid entry is an initial state for the Conway's Game of Life, which:
- does not contain any recognizable shape resembling the text "Hello World!"
- will contain a recognizable shape resembling the text "Hello World!" within a reasonable number of cycles (it should not run for more than a couple of minutes on a good PC - this enables billions of cycles and should be enough)
- the area where the "Hello World!" text will appear should be empty in the initial state! (Otherwise the problem would be way too easy) If no one manages to do it, we might reduce this requirement to "mostly empty"
The winner will be based on the number of upvotes in approximately one week after the first valid submission.
Guidelines for voting:
- more elaborate and beautiful output should be worth more
- output which is stable over many cycles should be worth more than one which fades away to be unrecognizable in the next cycle.
- a solution locked into a perpetual cycle, or starting from an interesting pattern is worth the most, because it proves intelligent design of the state, and not just random trial and error with a reverse simulation.
The entry should be in a format readable by at least one of the notable simulators or an online simulator which the answerer links to. Links (to an animation or a simulator set to the initial state) are also accepted, even encouraged. If the output is not visible within a few cycles, the entry should specify after which cycle will the result be visible.
There can be some slight tolerance in the phrase to be generated. It can be "
Hello, World!", "
hello, world" "
HELLO WORLD!" etc.