- Here is an image from one of our WinCA demos, which was
in turn inspired by an experiment in Rudy Rucker's DOS-based (and
now out of print) CA-Lab from Autodesk. Start the 16-color
basic cyclic particle system with a
uniform random mix except for a large droplet of solid color
(1, say) in the middle. Nucleation is so rare in this case that no
supercritical droplets emerge from the initial soup on our 640 by
480 array. But lucky colors on the edge of the superdroplet find
a cornucopia, and so rush in one after another, in cyclic waves.
After 1000 updates we get this colorful egg.
- Sampling from a 256-color WinCA palette, we created the
16-color egg.pal of spring colors.
We could have applied the software's Special Initialization feature
to make a circular hole of color 1 on a random background, but
to get a nice egg shape we chose to use cut and paste linking
to an external paint program in order to take advantage of its
ellipse tool. Running the egg.xpt experiment repeately one
can collect a whole basket of custom egg designs. Sadly, the
PC-egg shell interface is still under development. So for now we're
stuck with dyes and vinegar.
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