Re: A82: Life

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Re: A82: Life


Where in Michigan?  Maybe I can hit him for you. :)

--
Bryan Rabeler <brabeler@ticalc.org>
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Greg Milewski wrote:

> i'd hit you if i wasn't in NY and you in Michigan.
>
> EVERY programmer should know what it is, so here's the docs from life.85s
>
>   LIFE is: (in the 85 version)
>
> Another addition to the collection of old classic games for TI-85. "Game
> of
> Life" was invented by mathematician John Conway in 1970.  I'm sure that
> all
> hackers out there have tried it at least once.  If you're smart and
> creative,
> it can be very intellectually stimulating.  It's a simulation game which
> can
> generate strange and beautiful patterns, sometimes in complex and
> interesting
> ways.  Yet Conway's rules of Life are delightfully simple:
>
>    Conway proposed a simple model of growth & decay.  If a living cell
> has
> more than 3 living neighbors, it would die (overpopulation? starvation?
> not
> enough privacy?), and if it has less than 2 living neighbors, it also
> dies
> (loneliness? boredom?).  Thus a living cell can only survive with exactly
> two
> or three living neighbors.  On the other hand, a dead cell will come to
> life
> if it has exactly three living neighbors.  Each iteration therefore
> results in
> some cells coming to life, some dying, and some surviving unchanged.
>
>    However this version of Life has a little expansion:  The Rules of
> Life are
> changeable!  The rules say what judgement will a cell have on having X
> neighbor(s).  Possible judgements are death, survival and birth.  So a
> table
> is constructed it has 9 indexes (0 to 8 neighbors) and contains a boolean
> value that is %00=0 for death, %01=1 for survival, %10=2 for birth and
> %11=3
> for both survival and birth.  (The boolean-stuff is an optimization
> hack...)
>    The default 'Conway' table is 0,0,1,3,0,0,0,0,0. Ie. no neighbors =
> death,
> one neighbor = death, two neighbors = survival, three neighbors = birth
> and
> survival, four neighbor = death, etc...
>
> -Greg
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