Conways Game of Life - Christmas Edition

The Game of Life is a two dimensional universe in which patterns evolve through time. It is a great example of how in science a few simple rules can result in incredibly complex behaviour.

The Rules in the game are very simple. A square grid contains cells that are either alive or dead. The behaviour of each cell is dependent only on the state of its eight immediate neighbours, according to the following rules:

1. Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbors dies, as if by underpopulation.
2. Any live cell with two or three live neighbors lives on to the next generation.
3. Any live cell with more than three live neighbors dies, as if by overpopulation.
4. Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbors becomes a live cell, as if by reproduction.

The game was conceptualized by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in the 1970s using pen and paper. The amazing patterns created in it has inspired reasearch in many a computer scientists and helped launch a new branch of mathematics called cellular automata. We hope to re-introduce and inspire a new generation of young computer scientists.

Read more about the game here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life

Running the Program

(Note this program may not run on windows)

1. Install Prequiste software

   Python3: Python3 can be download and installed from here https://www.python.org/downloads/ For more detailed instructions see: https://realpython.com/installing-python

   Git: Most systems already come installed with Git. To check if git is installed, open a terminal and type git. For instructions to install see https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/install-git

2. Instead of running the code on your computer, you can choose to run it on the cloud by creating a free beginner account at https://www.pythonanywhere.com/registration/register/beginner/ It already comes installed with python3, git and urwid.

3. Clone the repository: Open a terminal session and run

git clone https://github.com/kenzanlabs/conways-game-of-life.git

4. cd into the folder where the files are located

   cd conways-game-of-life

5. Create a virtual env. Only needs to be done once. (Skip, if you are running this in pythonanywhere)

   python3 -m venv conwayV

5. Activate the virtual env. Will need to be done everytime you open a new terminal and come to this folder. (Skip, if you are running this in pythonanywhere)

   source conwayV/bin/activate

6. Install urwid (Skip, if you are running this in pythonanywhere)

   python3 -m pip install urwid

7. Run the program

   python3 gol.py

8. If you would like to change code. You will need to install a good code editor. I recommend https://code.visualstudio.com/?wt.mc_id=DX_841432

Program Design

The program is made up of 3 files.

• gol.py - This is the entry point of the program, it controls inputs from the user and is responsible for drawing the game on the terminal

• model.py - All the logic for applying the different Game of Life Rules and Keeping track of the state of each cell are managed here.

• initializer.py - Initializers contain different shapes, which can be used to initialize the Game of Life grid, when it starts up.

Modifying the Program

This software is open source software. We hope that you will take this code, own it, change it and reshare with the community.

Here are some ideas:

• Modify the rules to implement HighLife https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highlife_(cellular_automaton)

• Change the colors or blocks in the program

• Create other shapes: Take a look at the following articles for reference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Still_life_(cellular_automaton) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscillator_(cellular_automaton)

• Use a sparser memory structure: The current game uses a an array to store game state. This design uses a lot of memory if the board is large. Instead, state could be stored in a sparse memory structure.

Questions

Email us at mmathew 'at' kenzan.com