In the last decades many scientists realized that it needs more than the classic reductionism of physics to describe life and complex systems. Cellular automata were proven as great tools for such applications and are now used in biology, chemistry, physics, the design of parallel computers and image processing as well as image generation. Cellular automata also became attractive to people doing research in artificial life, artificial intelligence and evolution. Then basic concepts of Cafun cellular automata are quite simple. You have a two dimensional lattice of so called cells.
Every cell has eight neighbour cells and belongs to a cell type.
A cell behaves on the basis of rules defined by the cell type. These rules take the types of the eight neighbour cells into account to determine how the type of the cell will change. In one simulation step the rules of all cells on the lattice are tested to compute their types in the next step. Cafun Simulator is FREE available. It lets you simulate genomes, open and create surfaces, which define the space where your simulation takes place, and store your results for using them in graphic applications.