Life on a Donut app for iPhone and iPad

Life on a Donut is a single view app that simulates Conways Game of Life and a variation of the Billiard Ball Machine on the surface of a 3-dimensional torus (donut). You can spin the donut and zoom in and out with touch gestures as the "life" iterates at up to 60 frames per second.


Features at a glance:
- Up to three species per cell (plus no species). This is multi-coloured life.
- Selection between a variety of colour palettes.
- Randomized starting patterns for ease of play.
- A small library of categorized life patterns.
- Variable speeds: 60 to 60/64 frames per second.
- Simple heads up display (HUD).

So why on a donut? A donut is a space that has no boundaries so you dont have to have artificial rules at the boundaries. It makes for a more "pure" mathematical game.

But why at all? Its amusing and sometimes mesmerizing. At 60 FPS it really does look like something is alive.

It tries to do automatic cycle detection. So, when a pattern is either stable (can be a large period like when a glider is in orbit) or there are no cells left, the game will stop. It gets this right most of the time but it often takes a while before stability is detected.