Conway's Game of Life

A classic CS game to explore cellular automata. The inventor of Game of Life, John Conway, passed away on April 11th, 2020. This is my very primitive implementation of said game.

Running

1. Install .NET Core 3.1. See specific instructions here.
   • Windows installer: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download/dotnet-core/thank-you/runtime-aspnetcore-3.1.4-windows-x64-installer.
   • macOS installer: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download/dotnet-core/thank-you/runtime-3.1.4-macos-x64-installer
2. Download a release.
3. Unzip the contents onto your computer.
4. Open the folder and click on the file named "UI".
   • If this does not work, open a command prompt and run it from there.
   • Type something like cd Folder_Where_Files_Were_Unzipped_Into, then UI.

Development

Install .NET Core 3.x. Clone this repo. From the command line:

cd ConwaysGameOfLife
dotnet run --project UI

This will load the UI and allow you to load files, step through the sequence, or play through the entire sequence.

Feel free to add your own samples into the samples folder. Simply type in the new file name once it's loaded in to play it.

Assumptions/Limitations

1. The code assumes the inputs will be perfectly square (you can't have a longer dimension).
2. Printing is slow. It's controlled by clearing the console and pausing the thread for a bit.
3. No input validation. You can give it junk values and it will probably just explode.
4. When the cell state goes off the edge of the board, it can get locked into a state where some cells are alive and never change or go off the board.
5. No tests. The inputs I have seem to work, but it's not very good.