Conway's Game of Life

This is my little implementation of the Conway's Game of Life, using a very simple algorithm.

It is written in Lua, using the amazing Löve2D framework.

Download

Löve and Lua are not required when running on OSX nor Windows, but if you use a UNIX-like or the standard .love file, you must get them from their website or from your distribution's repository. Notice that you can use love-release to make your own releases, after having cloned the project.

• Every OS and Linux: GameOfLife.love
• Macintosh: GameOfLife-osx.zip
• Windows x86: GameOfLife-win-x86.zip
• Windows x64: GameOfLife-win-x64.zip

Controls

• r fills the matrix with random generated cells,
• c clears the matrix,
• d toggles drawing mode,
• space pauses the game,
• up and down control the speed,
• +, - and the mouse wheel can be used as zoom,
• q or escape quit the game.

You can use d to enter in the drawing mode. While in drawing mode, left and right can be used to select a predefined lifeform. Just click anywhere to render the lifeform. To quit the drawing mode, press space or d again. Moreover, when you are not in the drawing mode, a simple click on a cell will change its state.

Lifeforms

You can write your own lifeforms and then use them in drawing mode. You just have to edit the lifeforms.lua file. Default is:

• '#' for a living cell,
• ' ' for a dead cell,
• '$' for a newline.

Any number written before one of this characters will add n times this character. By example, ### (the blinker) is the same as 3#.

Future

In the future, I will try to improve the zoom, make rotation of pre-defined lifeform possible, and, why not, an Hashlife algorithm. Please have fun !