La Vie En Go

"La Vie En Go" is a concise and efficient implementation of Conway's Game of Life in Go (Golang). Started as a weekend project; aimed to provide a simple (and fun!) platform for exploring and visualising this cellular automaton in a terminal-based environment.

Features

• Terminal-Based Visualization: Watch the evolution of cells directly in your terminal.
• Custom Initial Configurations: Input your starting configurations to explore different patterns and behaviors.
• User Control: Pause the game and move forward step by step for more detailed observation of the cells' evolution. Resume the automatic evolution afterwards.
• Stop Condition: The game halts automatically when it detects no further changes or no life within the visible area, allowing for finite observation of the game.

Getting Started

These instructions will get you a copy of the project up and running on your local machine for development and testing purposes.

Prerequisites

• Go (Golang) installed on your system (installation guide)

Installing

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/ahmad-alkadri/LaVieEnGo.git

2. Navigate to the cloned directory:

cd LaVieEnGo

3. Run the game:

For interactive mode, where you can input your initial cells:

go run main.go

To run with predefined cell coordinates:

go run main.go -c "x1 y1, x2 y2, ..."

Usage

After starting the game, you'll be prompted to input the initial live cells' coordinates, or you can use the -c flag to specify them as arguments. The game progresses automatically, showing each new generation in your terminal.

Example Patterns

• Block: -c "1 1, 1 2, 2 1, 2 2"
• Glider: -c "1 2, 2 3, 3 1, 3 2, 3 3"
• Blinker: -c "2 1, 2 2, 2 3"

There are also some patterns in the examples folder. Example on how to run them:

go run main.go < examples/heart.txt

License

Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information.

Acknowledgments

• John Conway, for the original concept of the Game of Life.