Game of Life — Rust + minifb

A Conway’s Game of Life simulation written in Rust, using the minifb crate for windowed rendering. This project showcases how to build a simple cellular automaton with live controls (restart, speed up/down) in a native desktop window.

---

Features

• Random initial state on startup and on restart
• Tick‑based evolution following Conway’s rules
• Real‑time controls

---

Prerequisites

• Rust toolchain (with cargo): Install via rustup.rs
• Git (optional, for cloning)
• Platform: Windows, macOS, or Linux

---

Getting Started

1. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/josueggh/rust-game-of-life.git
cd rust-game-of-life

2. Install dependencies

The only external dependencies are in Cargo.toml:

• minifb for windolet width = 128; // grid width let height = 128; // grid height let scale = 4; // pixel size of each cell let mut delay = 50; // milliseconds between framesw management and pixel buffer
• rand for random initialization

Cargo will fetch these automatically.

3. Build & Run

In the project root:

cargo run --release

By default, the simulation runs at 128×128 cells with a 4×4 pixel scale and 50 ms delay between ticks. Adjust these settings in src/main.rs if desired.

---

Configuration

In src/main.rs, you can modify:

let width = 128;    // grid width
let height = 128;    // grid height
let scale = 4;      // pixel size of each cell
let mut delay = 50;  // milliseconds between frames

Tweak these constants, then rebuild with cargo run --release.

---

Controls

Key	Action
R	Restart with a new random universe
↑	Speed up (decrease delay by 5 ms)
↓	Slow down (increase delay by 5 ms)
Esc	Exit application

---

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for details.