The Game of Life, also known simply as Life, is a cellular automaton devised by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970.
It is a zero-player game, meaning that its evolution is determined by its initial state, requiring no further input.
The universe of the Game of Life is an infinite, two-dimensional orthogonal grid of square cells, each of which is in one of two possible states, live or dead, (or populated and unpopulated, respectively). Every cell interacts with its eight neighbours, which are the cells that are horizontally, vertically, or diagonally adjacent. At each step in time, the following transitions occur:
- Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies, as if by underpopulation.
- Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives on to the next generation.
- Any live cell with more than three live neighbours dies, as if by overpopulation.
- Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours becomes a live cell, as if by reproduction.
We can represent the universe with a 2D array in which every entrie of the array is a cell that is alive (1) or dead (0).
Let's say that C is a cell, calculated N, the number of lives in the neighborhood is possible to infer C'.
| C | N | C' | Rule |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0,1 | 0 | Rule 1 |
| 1 | 2,3 | 1 | Rule 2 |
| 1 | 4,5,6,7,8 | 0 | Rule 3 |
| 0 | 0,1,2,4,5,6,7,8 | 0 | Rule 4 |
| 0 | 3 | 1 | Rule 4 |
Following this method it's possible to define the next iteration of the array and so on.
Run
make
then
./gameoflife width height
Since the simulation runs inside the terminal it's advised to scale down the size to have a better experience.
You can speed-up or slow-down the simulacion by adjusting the DELAY.
Some inicial states have a minimum map size required.
TODO