The Game Of Life was created by John
Conway. It isn't really a "game" but a set of simple rules to describe turning
on/off cells in a checkerboard-like grid. When a cell is toggled on, it is alive
and when off, it is, alas, dead. Get A Life
The Game Of Life was created by John
Conway. It isn't really a "game" but a set of simple rules to describe turning
on/off cells in a checkerboard-like grid. When a cell is toggled on, it is alive
and when off, it is, alas, dead.
The rules governing life and death look at the adjacent cells to the individual. If a cell has 4 or more neighbors, then it dies due to overcrowding. If a cell is not alive and is surrounded by exactly 3 neighbors, a birth takes place. If a cell has exactly 2 live neighbors, it's state stays the same. If a cell has only 1 or no neighbor, it dies from starvation.
Many shapes were indentified and labeled according to their behavior and scope of life. Some shapes crawl across the screen, pulsate within a constant number of generations, or remain immobile. I've included a several sample shapes with the setup to get started. Conway's life uses an infinite grid vertically and horizontally. It can be a challenge to setup a configuration of dots which will sustain life for a long time or many generations; that is, without occilating back and forth between 2 generations. So go ahead, build your universe, and see how easy it is to be the Big Creator.
The checkboard lends itself neatly to be interpeted as a piano
roll. The vertical direction represents the pitch ( high to low) and the
horizontal direction represents the note offset ( the beat). It resembles a
sheet of music in this sense.
For our musical version of life, the number of rows is not infinite but limited to 128. This is the number of pitches allowable in Midi. For practical purposes, it is best to limit the number of rows to something reasonable ( between 20 and 50).
The pitches are determined from the scale selected. If a chromatic scale is selected, then the pitch will be easy to figure - basically the row identifer. If a diatonic scale is selected, the pitch will be the row offset into the scale ( rows 1,2,3 woudl be do, re, me ).
Life Software
The musical engine behind Life is the BrewskyMusic class library. This provides the Midi implementation and includes the mundane tasks of sending Note On and Note Off messages at the proper time and proper pitch. It supports patch changes as well. If you are interested in learning more about BrewskyMusic or would like to use in your own application, send an email to BrewskyMusic@verizon.net.
Life requires a PC machine with Windows and NET 2.0 installed.
Life requires a Midi sound card.
Check your Control Panel settings to see if you have a Midi or Software Synth enabled in your configuration.
Install Instructions:
1) Downloading the compressed file with link below
2) Unzip to a temp directory
3) Run the setup.exe program.
4) Enter the name of the path to install the application or accept the default
5) At the prompt for ScreenSaver, enter YES if you would like to install Life as a screensaver option.
Once installed, press 'H' to see the help or right click in the main screen for program options.
Life ScreenSaver
Life can be installed as a screensaver.
In order to run Life as a ScreenSaver, you need to install the necessary files during the setup (see above). This means that you have to have Windows permissions to the Windows directory.
Once the files are installed, you need to select Life as your screen saver. This can be done by right clicking on the desktop, select Properties, and select the ScreenSaver tab. Select "Life" from the list.
Needless to say, the sound could be a little annoying.
In this case, you may want to turn the sound off. Once the screensaver kicks in, you may right click in the grid to display the context menu. Just select the SoundOn menu item from the context menu.
The screensaver will also detect if your life is in a stale or oscillating state. If so, it will randomize the grid in order to seed some new life.
Life Download Link