Life Workshop

Documentation for v. 2.0

Overview

For those of you unfamiliar with John Conway's Game of Life here is how it works: we begin with a grid (2D in most cases). Some spaces contain a cell, others do not. Every generation, each cell is evaluated. Sometimes the cell is lonely or overcrowded so it dies. If conditions are right, a new cell may grow. Certain rules determine whether a cell survives, grows, or dies. The rules are dependent on the number of neighbors. Here's Conway's set of rules that started it all:

<2 neighbors - cell dies
2 neighbors - cell remains as is (stasis)
3 neighbors - cell lives or new cell grows
>3 neighbors - cell dies

So the coolest thing about this game is the patterns. From a completely random grid, organized patterns can result. Some patterns are stable, others repeat themselves after a certain number of cycles, and some will even move across the grid.

For lots more info, please follow the above link.

Requirements

A computer running Windows 3.1 or higher. (hehe)
Curiosity

Terms of Use

Life Workshop is freeware, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License.

Features

I must confess there are better versions of Life out there, versions that can handle grids of unlimited size, but in my experience these are not very interactive or easy to use. This version of Life is easy to interact with, easy to use, and makes discovering new patterns and interacting with the grid very easy. Some features:

You can draw right on the grid (use both mouse buttons to draw and erase)
Adjustable speed
Population counter
You can move both forward and backward by step. This is handy when you see a really neat pattern and want to stop the cycles and go back to see what that pattern was.
You can skip right to a certain generation number. In case you didn't hit stop right away but you did take note of the generation number.
The grid is sizable
"Kaleidoscope mode" is not only fun to watch...
This is Life where you decide the rules! You can decide your own rules and discover your own patterns
You can save and load grids (ruleset included) and exchange the patterns with your friends
You can either generate new random patterns or start your current pattern from the beginning. Double-clicking the mini-grid will start you over from that original.
Simple one-stroke keyboard shortcuts for everything

Keyboard Shortcuts

G
S
C
F
D
R
A
K
L
Z*
Up
Down
Right*
Left*
J*
H

Go
Stop
Clear
Fill
Draw
Regenerate
Start the current pattern over
Kaleidoscope mode
Adjust the laws
Resize the grid
Increase speed
Decrease speed
Go forward a generation
Go back a generation
Jump to specific generation number
Hide controls. With all these keyboard shortcuts, who needs 'em?

* Only works when stopped

You can also right-click the grid (unless you are drawing) to bring up a pop-up menu.

Sample Patterns

If you download the zip file, you'll see it contains several sample patterns, but looking at them may reduce some of your fun of discovering patterns for yourself. Load them on your own discretion.

Included are:

rockets.lif - a moving pattern
rockets2.lif - some more moving patterns
cyclic.lif - a sampling of some stable patterns
warp.lif - something crazy you can do with different rules

Known Errors/Limitations

When I wrote this I was limited by then-current hardware and my own inabilities to foresee the scope this program could have. As such, the grid is currently limited to a maximum size of 60x80.

Feedback

Send suggestions, discovered bugs, encouraging remarks, or even hate mail to me at support@@spamsafezachbardon.com.

Thanks for downloading Life Workshop! Enjoy!

~Zach~
Brainfather, Zach Bardon Software