That's astounding!

Might be good to let things percolate for another week or three, before trying to build the 8x8-based Tetris computer with this new metacell. One of the drive guns currently overflows the boundaries of the cell, in a way that may turn out to be more complicated than necessary. It might be nice to build a version that's completely self-contained in 512x512.

@DaveGreene Not being familiar with GoL lingo myself, what counts as "stable circuitry"?

Stable circuitry is all made out of still lifes that just sit there until a signal (glider, MWSS, Herschel, or whatever) comes along. Then it reacts with the signal -- reflects it, splits it into two signals, etc. -- and recovers back to the same stable state, to wait for the next signal.

Ahh, that makes sense. I imagine that also makes timing easier since you just have to wait at least the amount of time for it to re-stabilize.

There are advantages and disadvantages. It's nice that you don't have to worry about oscillating mechanisms being in the right phase -- but stable circuits are generally quite a bit bulkier and more awkward to connect than p4 or p8 ones. HashLife really won't care one way or the other, of course.