Anti-Ants

Reversible Ants cellular automaton is too active: a single nonempty cell produces diamond-like pattern growing with unit speed. Special limitations may reduce result of undesired activity. For example, an additional passive background state in Wired Ants restricts propagation of signals only along the wires.

Yet another method – to use a “negated” (complimentary) cellular automaton. In such a case instead of ants on empty field we may have some “anti-ants” moving inside solid arrays of cells with the same state.

For reversible ants it is enough to change the first stage for such a negation:

First stage. Mark all cells satisfying two conditions:

1. total number of red and blue cells in four closest positions is two or three
2. all cells in four diagonal positions are either red or blue.