Feature request: rule editor

[Pr0methean]

It would be nice if this app had a tool for visualizing and editing rules as 2-D slices of an n-dimensional array. Then it would be much easier to design my own rules, because I'd be able to see "okay, this group of pages is for a dead cell, this page is for 0 green neighbors, this column is for 3 red neighbors, and this row is for 0 blue neighbors; so if I want a dead cell to turn red when it has 3 red neighbors, 0 green neighbors and 0 blue neighbors, I click this cell until it turns red". Even if this was limited to 3 or 4 total states, it'd still be very useful. For instance, I'd be able to use it to translate a set of tables like the one I'll paste in a comment below, which is for a 3-state CA I'm interested in testing, into a rule file.

[Pr0methean]

Red cells:

| Blue neighbors \ Red neighbors | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4-8 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 0 | dead | dead | red | red | dead |
| 1 | dead | dead | red | dead | dead |
| 2 | blue | red | red* | dead | dead |
| 3 | blue | dead | dead | dead | dead |
| 4-8 | dead | dead | dead | dead | dead |

Blue cells:

| Blue neighbors \ Red neighbors | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4-8 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 0 | dead | dead | blue* | red | dead |
| 1 | dead | dead | blue | dead | dead |
| 2 | blue* | blue | dead* | dead | dead |
| 3 | blue | dead | dead | dead | dead |
| 4-8 | dead | dead | dead | dead | dead |

Dead cells:

| Blue neighbors \ Red neighbors | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4-8 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 0 | dead | dead | dead | red | dead |
| 1 | dead | dead | red | dead | dead |
| 2 | dead | blue | dead | dead | dead |
| 3 | blue | dead | dead | dead | dead |
| 4-8 | dead | dead | dead | dead | dead |

(NB: the cells marked * are intentional asymmetries. I don't know why these Markdown tables aren't being rendered as tables.)

[benpm]

I definitely want to add a ruleset editor, but providing the whole ruleset grid becomes unwieldy when the number of states gets past 3... For bigger rulesets, I think I'll provide at alternative view that only shows the rules that result in a non-zero state. This is because most interesting rules with a larger number of states are mostly being set to state 0. You can verify this by changing the zero rate:

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These are some ideas for how it'd look. I'm open to anything that doesn't clutter the screen and isn't too confusing. I do like the idea of providing a way to set an entire range of neighbor counts.