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Reverse Game of Life Font
Find a starting pattern that evolves into a letter: a font that grows itself.
Full write-up · very much under construction
This project grew big enough that I made a detailed post for it. It's a work in progress.
What it is
Conway's Game of Life runs forward: a pattern of cells evolves by simple local rules. This project runs it backward. For every letter and symbol in a pixel font, it finds a starting pattern (a "seed") that turns into that letter after one or more steps. The result is a font that grows itself.
How it works
Finding a predecessor is a hard search problem, so I compared approaches: genetic algorithms, simulated annealing, and SAT solvers. A SAT solver (Kissat, via PySAT) wins clearly. Each glyph is placed in a 10×10 grid with wrap-around edges, which works better than a tight 8×8 grid despite the larger search space.
How it was made
How it was made: notes on my role and any AI assistance coming soon.
Links
Code, demo, and write-ups.