Rule Cycling
Rule Cycling
A simple way to introduce more variety into the patterns generated by an elementary cellular automata (ECA) is to allow each generation to use a different rule. Here you specify a list of rules which can be either cycled through or sampled randomly at each generation. To watch a favorite rule interact with other rules, put it first in the list, press the "retain first rule" checkbox, and then repeatedly create random lists. If you are used to looking at ECA patterns, these patterns immediately stand out as something different.