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At 2:00 in the official trailer, the narrator explains that you can "even program the game of life, if you like".

What does this mean ?

Is he referring to a game feature ?

1 Answer 1

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He is referring to Conway's Game of Life.

The Game of Life is interesting because it is both simple and Turing complete, so it is a good indicator of Factorio's level of flexibility (on par with that of Minecraft's redstone circuitry, for example).

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    On a side note, is there any evidence that the narrator is telling the truth and its proven that is possible or somebody has done it already? Commented Mar 18, 2016 at 8:39
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    @Sergii The video clearly shows a GoL simulation. Whether it's real is another matter.
    – Kevin
    Commented Mar 18, 2016 at 15:13
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    @SergiiZaskaleta: It is actually not difficult to make a system Turing Complete (meaning it can compute anything a computer can, given enough time). For example, Brainfuck is a Turing Complete programming language with only 8 instructions. Minecraft's redstone is dead-simple, and it is Turing Complete. This game's logic circuits are much more powerful than Minecraft's, making it easy to prove they are indeed Turing Complete. Commented Mar 21, 2016 at 7:01
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    @Kevin - Many of the factories seen in the gameplay trailer are from saved games uploaded to the official forums before the Steam launch. I found one save that plays a simplified GoL.
    – raveturned
    Commented Mar 21, 2016 at 15:49
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    @SergiiZaskaleta Beyond the GoL, I recently ran across a game of Pacman programmed in Factorio. Commented Sep 5, 2017 at 6:37

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