conway's game of life

The Game of Life is a simulation game that was invented by John Conway, a Cambridge Mathematician and frequent visitor to the U of C, and was first published in Scientific American in October 1970. It is a classic programming example/assignment/pastime.

The game runs on a square two-dimensional array that represents a flat surface. On this surface live 'creatures' - initially the distribution of creatures in the array can be random. Each cell in the array is either occupied (has a creature in it) or empty. Then the program goes into a loop that is intended to simulate the passage of time. Each pass through the loop represents an arbitrary period in time, during which creatures are born or die.

A creature will live at least one more cycle if it has two or three neighbours - it dies of isolation if there are fewer , and of over crowding if there are more.

A creature will be born into an empty cell if exactly three neighbouring cells contain creatures.

A creature will die (of overcrowding, presumably) if it has four (4) or more neighbouring creatures.

To quote from Scientific American: "It is important to understand that all births and deaths occur simultaneously."
 
You are to write a C++ program to play the Game of Life. The size of the array is 20 rows by 20 columns. An empty cell can be represented by the value 0, and a creature by a 1. There can only be one creature in any cell. Initialize the array using one of the random number generators to flip a 'coin' and place a 1 or 0 in each cell, or by reading in a pre-defined initial 20X20 array of creatures.
 
You must have a procedure that prints out the entire array after each loop and at the beginning of the game. Print a blank space for an empty cell and a '*' for a creature. For example, a 10X10 array might look like this:
 


Game of Life: round 3

*
	*	*
									*
				*				*
			*			*		*
		*			*	*	*
								*

 


Game of Life: round 4

	*
	*
									*
							*	*	*
			*	*		*		*
					*	*	*
						*	*




A heading for each time you print out the array would be nice, and you could also print out which pass through the loop (iteration) this is.
 
Be wary of the edge of the board.
 


General Remarks:


The use of functions is required for this assignment.


 


You don't need to do actual file I/O for this one. You can set up an initial board as a matrix of 1's and 0's and read it using re-directed I/O.


 


Class notes on random numbers will be available soon.

There is a sample 'board' in the course directory. It's called 'life1.board'. It's 20X20 and has zeros around all edges.
If you want your programs to do do both random and 'pre-defined' first generations, you can edit the first board files to include the user response. For example if the program first asks:

Do you want a random board (y/n)?

then you can put 'n' in the first board file all by itself on the first line and still be able to run it with re-directed I/O.

When first testing your programs it might be easier to read in an initial board. 


Bonus:


1. allow the game to 'wrap around' the edges of the board. That is, for a 10X10 board, the column after column 9 is 0 and the row previous to 0 is 9. To get the bonus marks the program must first work perfectly in the normal way, and you must demonstrate this. Then demonstrate the wrap around.


2. Allow different sized boards (to a max of perhaps 40; remember to set a reasonable maximum)
3. Allow the user to specify the number of generations or take direction for the user at each generation (continue or not) NOTE: You can't let the program just run.
4.Allow the user to 'diddle' between generations: i.e. add or kill a critter in a specified location which could be given by a row and column number.
5. Have the program collect statistics at each generation (births; deaths) and print them after each generation as well as cumulative statistics at the end.
6. Have the program detect a consistent drop in population (over a number of generations) as well as detecting when the board has been completely depopulated.





---

Other Notes:

Entering a specified board can be done 2 ways:

enter the complete board as 1's/0's '.'/'-', etc.

enter the 'coordinates' for each square containing a critter

 

Creating a random board can be done several ways:

- go through every square and randomly choose 0/1

- pick some number (perhaps user input) of critters to start with and randomly choose the coordinates for each of those critters. If locations are not checked to see if they are already occupied (which isn't required), there is no guarantee that the user will end up with 'n' crutters (i.e. a square may be chosen more than once)

Updated: August 10, 2005 01:07 PM