Game of Life

[zedd151]

Dr. John Conways 'Game of Life'.
Would make an interesting project. I might in fact explore doing that, at some point in the future. 

[FORTRANS]

Hi,

   Yes, after it first appeared in Martin Gardner's "Mathematical
Games" column in "Scientific American", I tried coding up a
version of it.  A long time ago, so memories have faded away,
but crude.  And fun.

Steve N.

[zedd151]

I tried coding up a version of it.
 A long time ago, so memories have faded away, but crude.  And fun.

Steve N.

Hi Steve, seems a very doable project. I just have to get up the motivation to start working on it. Look for it in the Game Development board at some time in the yet undetermined future. 

[daydreamer]

Hi,

   Yes, after it first appeared in Martin Gardner's "Mathematical
Games" column in "Scientific American", I tried coding up a
version of it.  A long time ago, so memories have faded away,
but crude.  And fun.

Steve N.

Was it so long ago it was monochrome graphics with logic to shift bits (pixels) while add bits together ?

Modern version could use HD resolution graphics ,those old computers was limited to lowres graphics and slow CPU and tiny memory

[zedd151]

those old computers was limited to lowres graphics and slow CPU and tiny memory

But...
Was perfect for demonstrating 'The Game of Life' back in the day - plus the limitations made it much more fun to program I would imagine.
Don't really need high res graphics for such a simple program. And too much speed would result in not being able to see the 'action' without slowing it down enough.
I will find out soon enough. Not sure yet how I will approach coding my example of it. Most likely will be 32 bit, though.

[daydreamer]

I will be looking forward to 32 bit version

[FORTRANS]

Hi,

Hi,

   Yes, after it first appeared in Martin Gardner's "Mathematical
Games" column in "Scientific American", I tried coding up a
version of it.  A long time ago, so memories have faded away,
but crude.  And fun.

Steve N.

Was it so long ago it was monochrome graphics with logic to shift bits (pixels) while add bits together ?

   It was so long ago, that it was probably just pencil and paper.
Or maybe chips or coins on a checkerboard.  So coding might be an
exaggeration.

Steve

[daydreamer]

Maybe someone else coded bit manipulation game of life code ?

I wrote something similar to very old code in dos 16 bit forum earlier : apple ii shapes made with bit encoded vectors

[FORTRANS]

Hi,

   If you look into the Forum Links -> Archive 2 -> 7908_STATE.zip
has a DOS program that is a video state machine, something like a
brain dead Game of Life.  A search did not find the thread where
I originally posted it.  {Rats.}

Steve N.

[FORTRANS]

Hi,

   The posting was in the old forum.  It has some
information about the programs.

State Machine

Regards,

Steve N.

[zedd151]

Thanks Steve, I'll have a look at that later today. 

[NoCforMe]

So here's my first effort, a working demo. Shows a 60x60 "playing field".

Not the world's most elegant user interface, I'll admit:
To start a game, click "Restart". Then click in the field to turn cells "on". To start the game, click "Play". Make moves by clicking "Move".

Next I think I'll make it step automagically until it reaches a steady state (either all cells "dead" or no more changes happening). It should be easy to detect the latter condition, since I keep a list of all cells that have changed for each move. If it reaches a steady state, some cells will still be changing, but the number of changed cells either won't change, or will alternate between two values. (I think.)

Interesting game.

Oh, let me know if the thing is too big for you. It barely fits my screen (and isn't resizeable).

[zedd151]

Size is okay. All cells die too quickly. Even for this small size, takes quite some time to fill in enough of them to let it live for any length of time.
Is there some way for you to fill in the starting positions with n number of cells turned on (user choice?), perhaps using a prng?

I havent even started any code for my version. 
Otherwise your version seems is off to a good start.

[NoCforMe]

New mo'betta' version attached, shows some stats.
How fast they die is entirely up to you. Sure, one could easily have some canned starting patterns. I'm not yet familiar enough with the process to come up with any. I have found that bigger, blockier starts tend to last longer. You'll have to experiment. (If you come up with some good patterns, let me know, maybe take a screenshot.)

Feel free to use anything from mine in yours, if it suits you.

[zedd151]

Ok, I'll check this one out when I'm back in front of my computer.