Cells

Cells is a cellular automaton program. It was inspired by Conway's Game of Life, and supports a total of 2^18 (262,144) unique rule sets.

Screenshot

Table Of Contents

• Features
• Controls
• Installation
• Building
  • Minimum Requirements
  • Steps To Build
• License
• Author

Features

• GUI for changing settings on the fly
  • Rules
    • Rule grid and rule string
    • These automatically sync together
  • Board
    • Load/save with any filename
    • Resizable to any size
  • Colors
    • Preset colors from config file are shown
    • Can reverse the currently used colors
  • Simulation
    • Simulation speed can be finely adjusted
    • Play/pause, clear, and random buttons
    • Can automatically save generations to image files
  • Tools
    • Paint/duplicate/simulate/toroidal
• Customizable rule sets
  • The states on the rule grid can be switched on/off
  • These can also be defined in a format like "B3/S23"
  • B means birth, or the number of neighboring cells that must be live for a dead cell to become live
  • S means survival, or the number of neighboring cells that must be live for a live cell to stay live
• Multiple tools
  1. Paint on/off (blue)
  2. Copy/paste (red)
  3. Normal simulator (yellow)
  4. Toroidal simulator (green)
• Customizable color palette
  • This is specified as a list of colors in #RGB or #RRGGBB format
  • The first color is used for dead cells, and the rest of the colors are used for live cells
  • Each generation a cell is still live, it will switch to the next color. Once it reaches the last color, it will stay that color until it dies.

Controls

There are various hotkeys and mouse controls for manipulating, controlling, and viewing the board.

Controls	Description
GUI:
Escape	Toggle visibility of GUI
Tools:
Left click	Use current tool's primary action
Right click	Use current tool's secondary action
1, 2, 3, 4, or Ctrl + mouse wheel	Switch between the tools
Ctrl + left click drag	Change tool selection size (rectangular)
Ctrl + right click drag	Change tool selection size (square)
Ctrl + click	Reset tool selection size to 1x1
Simulating:
Spacebar	Run continually at current speed
Enter	Run a single generation
N	Toggle running continually at current speed
Q/W	Cycle through preset rules
Panning:
Arrow keys or middle click drag	Pan around the board
M	Center the board
Zooming:

• and - keys | Zoom in and out I and O | Zoom in and out 2x Mouse wheel | Zoom in and out to mouse pointer R | Reset the zoom to 1:1 Board: | C | Clear the board Y | Save the board to an image

Installation

Head over to releases to download the latest stable version.

Building

Minimum Requirements

• SFML 2.1
• GCC 4.8 or Clang 3.1
• CMake 2.8.12

Steps To Build

1. Install all of the dependencies listed above.
2. Use CMake to generate a Makefile or an IDE project.
3. Use the generated files to build Cells.

License

This source code is licensed under the GPLv3 license. See LICENSE.txt for more details.

Author

Eric Hebert