by: Keith Fenske, https://kwfenske.github.io/
Life is an old Java 1.1 AWT (GUI) applet to play John Conway's Game of Life. You define a board pattern and then watch as the computer projects future generations of this pattern based on rules for growth and decay. Even with some of the most simple initial patterns, you can obtain results that are both beautiful and intriguing.
Cells (squares) on a rectangular grid are either empty or full (occupied). The next generation is calculated by counting the number of occupied neighbors, up to a maximum of eight. Fewer than two neighbors, or more than three, results in death: the cell will be empty in the next generation. No change is made if there are exactly two neighbors. Exactly three neighbors results in a birth: the cell will be occupied.
The program's comments and documentation reference web sites that no longer exist, and discuss differences in Java versions that are now meaningless. No changes will be considered. Web page applets are obsolete and may run as stand-alone applications with the help of a wrapper (included). This becomes less likely after Java 9 (2017). Rewriting for Java Swing or newer JavaFX is not an easy job.
Download the ZIP file here: https://kwfenske.github.io/life-game-java.zip
Released under the terms and conditions of the GNU General Public License, version 3 or later (GPLv3+).
