Post by micolasflanel in Phluxel — a cellular automata editor where you write your own rules

Viewing post in Phluxel — a cellular automata editor where you write your own rules

I thought to myself quite recently that something like this would be useful for my project. Funnily enough that was what happened with Gleba (https://calandiel.itch.io/gleba), which is not quite this kind of pixel procedural, but does feel relevant and I've since used it to generate the basis for some pixel concept art/world building.

Not sure if this is just an issue on my end, but the web demo is stuck on loading for me (iphone and windows desktop) - figured that might be useful feedback. I downloaded the demo and told windows to trust you. :]

As a gimp user - looks great, tidy familiar UI. I like the brush resize ctrl+scroll. If ctrl+click isn't assigned to anything, I could see it being really handy as a quick eyedropper tool (gimp does this when you are using a pencil / brush tool) ... although I assume the primary intended path would be to paste in from the user's preferred paint environment, so I will say what's here works perfectly fine and I'd probably end up starting in gimp and making adjustments here / going back and forth.

Unfortunately the rule editor is a bit beyond me just because I am not very fluent with the language/logic used. I'm hoping I'll pick up on it by looking at the website / a bit of research on my end. I understand it at a conceptual level, but can't properly test/use it just yet - the trial looks like it'll give me the freedom needed to learn.

ErinWave51 days ago

Thanks so much for actually downloading and kicking the tires — and for braving the SmartScreen warning :] This is exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping for.

Gleba looks really cool, thanks for the link. Using CA output as a basis for concept art / worldbuilding rather than a final product is honestly one of the use cases I'm most excited about, so I'd love to see what you end up making with it.

The web demo being stuck on loading — that was 100% on my end, not yours. The CDN was silently re-compressing the demo's files in a way that broke the browser's integrity checks. It's fixed now (verified on desktop) — if you get a chance to retry, a hard refresh (Ctrl+Shift+R) may be needed the first time. Thanks for reporting it; you likely saved me a bunch of silent bounces.

On the eyedropper: Alt+Click already does exactly that from any tool — and you sold me on the GIMP muscle memory, so I've just implemented Ctrl+Click as a color picker while using the Pen, Eraser, or Fill tools too. It'll ship in the next update v0.15.12. (There's also a setting for which tool the eyedropper returns you to afterwards: stay / pen / eraser / fill.) And yes, the "draw in GIMP, bring it into Phluxel, iterate, go back" loop is a fully intended path — PNG/GIF import and clipboard paste both work.

On the rule language — totally fair, and you're not alone. A few things that might flatten the curve:

- Help ▸ Starter Gallery has 20 ready-made scenes/effects; applying one and reading its rule in the editor is the fastest way to learn by example.

- The Rule Editor has a plain-English breakdown panel that explains what each line of the current rule does, plus a cheatsheet of every token with tooltips.

- Many built-in rules expose live parameter sliders, so you can get a feel for cause-and-effect before writing anything.

- There's a Quick Start and a full language reference under Help as well.

If you hit a wall on a specific effect you're trying to make, tell me what you're going for — happy to sketch the rule for you, and those conversations usually turn into better docs/templates anyway. Thanks again for the thoughtful writeup!

micolasflanel50 days ago

Thank you! I can confirm the demo is working! The preloaded rule, "classics", effects examples etc are inspired. Wow!!

Really appreciate the pointers, I'll report back when I've had a proper dive in ... by which time I would hope this has gotten the attention it deserves! Thanks for your efforts to make something this awesome available.

ErinWave50 days ago

Ha, thank you! That's really nice to hear.

The starter examples took way longer than I expected to get right, so I'm happy they made a good first impression.

No pressure on the report — dig in whenever you get the chance. And if anything feels confusing or broken, tell me. That kind of feedback is honestly the most useful thing at this stage (there's also a Send Feedback thing in the Help menu if that's easier).

Thanks again for giving it a real look. Have fun with it!