A command line simulation program for Conway's Game of Life with virtually no restriction on cell growth.
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Install make and g++
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Clone this repository
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Run
maketo build the project
Building this project provides two programs, an interactive console program, which we call the driver program (driver.exe), and a timer program (timer.exe).
The driver program is shown in the example GIF at the top. Its usage is as follows:
Usage: driver.exe PATTERN_FILENAME
It takes the filename of a pattern in RLE format as its only argument, initializes the grid to that pattern, prints it out, and waits for user input.
The program reacts to user input in the following ways:
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If a blank line is entered, the generation is incremented by one and the new grid configuration is printed
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If a positive integer x is entered, the generation is incremented by x and the new grid configuration is printed
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All other input is ignored
To end the program, send the EOF signal (Ctrl+D on Linux and MacOS, Ctrl+Z on Windows).
The timer program is used to measure the execution time of going from generation 0 to generation x for a given starting grid configuration and a given positive integer x. Its usage is as follows:
Usage: timer.exe PATTERN_FILENAME NUM_ITERATIONS [--stats]
Like the driver program, the timer program takes the filename for a pattern file in RLE format as its first argument. In addition to that, it takes the number of iterations as its second argument, and an optional third argument "--stats".
By default the timer program only prints the execution time. If the optional argument is provided, it will also print statistics about the initial and final grid configurations, in that order, before printing the execution time. The statistics printed are as follows:
size- the number of living cells in the griddims- the dimensions of the smallest bounding box containing all living cells in the grid, format: width by heightspan- the positions of the upper-left-most and bottom-right-most living cells in the grid, format: min_pos to max_pos
As an example, we run the driver program on glider.rle. We input four consecutive new lines to increment the generation by one, four times. The output, with the extra new lines removed, is shown below.
[mokhan@aspire life]$ ./driver.exe glider.rle
Generation 0
.O.
..O
OOO
Generation 1
O.O
.OO
.O.
Generation 2
..O
O.O
.OO
Generation 3
O..
.OO
OO.
Generation 4
.O.
..O
OOO
It seems that this pattern oscillates between four states. To confirm our suspicions, we run the program again, this time incrementing the generation by a multiple of four, say, 400.
[mokhan@aspire life]$ ./driver.exe glider.rle
Generation 0
.O.
..O
OOO
400
Generation 400
.O.
..O
OOO
Sure enough, we're at the same configuration! So what's going on? Is this pattern remaining in the same place? To confirm this, we'll (weirdly) run the timer program with its optional argument --stats.
[mokhan@aspire life]$ ./timer.exe glider.rle 400 --stats
size 5
dims 3 by 3
span (0,0) to (2,2)
size 5
dims 3 by 3
span (100,100) to (102,102)
time 0m0.000s
We now see that the top left corner of the glider started at position (0, 0) in Generation 0, and ended at position (100, 100) in Generation 400. It seems that the pattern moved across the internal grid data structure. Now the name "glider" makes sense!
Here are some tips and tricks for this project.
You can create something similar to an animation with the driver program by simply holding the enter or return key. Of course, all this does is increment the generation by one repeatedly, but the results are nice to look at (see the example GIF at the top).
From the repository, you might have noticed that there are several pattern files provided, namely
- glider.rle
- gosperglidergun.rle
- glidertrain.rle
- rpentominio.rle
- breeder1.rle
I suggest trying out the first four with the driver program, they have really interesting and different outputs!
The last file, breeder1.rle does not fit in a normal terminal window in its initial configuration, so I don't recommend using the driver program with it. It was included because it has the interesting property that the number of cells grows quadratically with the number of generations. It may be interesting to test that out for yourself.
Finally, can you guess the growth functions for the other patterns without running tests with the timer program? How about with running tests with the timer program? Try it out!
All the pattern files included were taken from LifeWiki. If you want, you can browse for more patterns on this website, download the RLE pattern file, and use it with one of the programs! One thing to look out for though, if you're searching for a pattern to use with the driver program, make sure the dimensions of the pattern are small enough so that you can see it in your terminal.