golly

Welcome to Golly, a sophisticated tool for exploring Conway's

Game of Life and other cellular automata.

- Unbounded universe (limited only by memory).

- Fast, memory-efficient conventional algorithm.

- Use hashing to see large patterns evolve at huge time scales.

- Responsive even while generating or garbage collecting.

- Reads RLE, Life 1.05/1.06, dblife, and macrocell formats.

- Can also read common graphic formats: BMP, PNG, GIF, TIFF.

- Includes a state-of-the-art pattern collection.

- Supports other Life-like rules and Wolfram's 1D rules.

- Fast loading of large patterns.

- Paste in patterns from the clipboard.

- Unlimited undo/redo.

- Unbounded zooming out for astronomical patterns.

- Auto fit option keeps a generating pattern within view.

- Full screen option (no menu/status/tool/scroll bars).

- Supports multiple layers, including cloned layers.

- HTML-based help with integrated Life Lexicon.

- Scriptable via Perl or Python.

- User-configurable keyboard shortcuts.

- Free, open source and cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux).

- We also provide bgolly, a GUI-less version.