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Exploratory Programming series - Lenia Cellular Automata in Godot

This is the third Lenia digital life coding video in the Lenia series.

This time we're reviewing some example code from GitHub and adding a ton of enhancements to it so we can play with the Lenia lifeforms with real-time input controls!

This version uses compute shaders and is better than the GDScript version. That GDScript version is great for learning the moving parts of the algorithm but this GLSL shader version is so much faster and more fun to play with. The original code on GitHub is an excellent example of Lenia running in a GLSL shader within Godot - it's worth checking out if you're new to compute shaders. links below


STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS
-Lenia was created by Bert Chan and is a continuous generalization of the Game of Life by John Conway.
-The core GLSL Lenia concept for this shader is by Ludmuterol.


CHAPTERS
00:00 Intro
00:40 Topics
01:46 Compute Shader Intro
03:08 Enhancements
04:38 Four Panel Display
06:35 Push Constants
08:17 Color Selector
09:57 Dynamic Kernel
12:01 Interactive Controls
14:52 Loading Lifeform Resources
17:28 Final Results


USEFUL LINKS, ATTRIBUTION, AND DEMOS:

Godot Project on GitHub:
https://github.com/ThePathfindersCodex

Original Shader Inspiration:
https://github.com/Ludmuterol/lenia_godot

Official Godot Documentation on Compute Shaders:
https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/shaders/compute_shaders.html