Golly

Golly is an open‑source, cross‑platform application for exploring Conway’s Game of Life and a wide range of cellular automata. It supports both bounded and unbounded universes with up to 256 cell states and includes many rule sets such as von Neumann’s 29‑state CA, Wolfram’s one‑dimensional rules, WireWorld, Generations, Paterson’s Worms, Larger than Life, and 3D rules like Busy Boxes. Users can load additional rules through the RuleLoader algorithm and work with patterns stored in formats such as RLE, macrocell, Life 1.05/1.06, dblife, MCell, as common image files.

The interface remains responsive while generating patterns or performing garbage collection, offering features like unlimited undo/redo, configurable keyboard shortcuts, auto‑fit display, full‑screen mode, and multiple (including cloned) layers. Patterns, rules, and scripts can be imported from zip archives or downloaded from online repositories, and the built‑in pattern collection provides ready‑made examples.

Golly provides scripting via embedded Lua 5.4.4 and Python 3.3+, supports sound playback, and includes HTML‑based help with an integrated Life Lexicon. It runs on Windows 7+, macOS 10.11+, and Linux with GTK 2.x, and is available as source or binary distributions.