What starting density leaves the most cells alive once the soup settles down? Black live cells thin out quickly. Within a few hundred ticks most regions freeze into blocks and beehives, with blinkers flipping in place.
Try this Set density to 15 and press Reset (density is only read at setup), then compare with 35 and 50. The boards start with about 250, 590 and 840 live cells but usually settle with a similar 30 to 60; the spread between runs is larger than the effect of density.
About this model Where it ends up
John Conway's Game of Life (1970) built from agents rather than patch states, after Life Turtle-Based in the NetLogo Models Library. Every cell is a pet that stays in place and switches between alive and dead.
Setup puts one cells pet on each patch of a 41 × 41 torus and makes it alive with probability density/100 (density is read only at setup). Each tick every cell counts the live cells on the 8 patches around it, using the previous tick's states, and all cells update together: a dead cell with exactly 3 live neighbors comes alive, a live cell with 2 or 3 stays alive, and every other cell is dead next tick (B3/S23). Dead cells are hidden rather than removed, so the number of pets never changes. The run never stops by itself.
The rule is identical to the patch-based Life model; the board is smaller, 41 × 41 against 97 × 97.
