Game of Life

Multiple implementations of Conway's Game of Life and its variations with interactive visualization and variants.

Overview

• Standard Game of Life (GoL) - Classic infinite grid variant
• Toroidal Game of Life - Wraparound edges, finite bounded grid
• Two-Player Game of Life (p2life) - Competitive variant with two players
• Two-Player Toroidal - Competitive with bounded toroidal grid

Installation

Requirements:

• Python 3.7+
• pygame
• matplotlib

To install dependencies:

pip install pygame matplotlib

Running

For standard Game of Life:

cd gol
python main.py

For other variants:

cd gol_toroidal
python main.py

cd p2life
python main.py

cd p2life_toroidal
python main.py

Controls

• Space - Play/Pause
• C - Clear grid
• G - Toggle grid visibility
• Plus/Minus - Adjust speed
• Mouse Wheel - Zoom in/out
• Left Click - Toggle cell
• Ctrl + Right Click - Place pattern from menu

Standard Game of Life

• Universe class stores live cells in a set
• Each generation counts neighbors and applies Conway's rules
• Live cell with 2-3 neighbors survives
• Dead cell with exactly 3 neighbors becomes alive
• All others die
• Infinite grid, only live cells are tracked

Toroidal Variant

• Same rules as standard GoL
• Finite grid (default 50x50)
• Cell coordinates wrap around at edges using modulo arithmetic
• No cells are lost at boundaries

Two-Player Game of Life

Cells are owned by a player (WHITE or BLACK).

Survival rules:

• Live cell survives if net neighbor advantage is 2-3
• Live cell survives with advantage 1 if it has 2+ friendly neighbors

Birth rules:

• Empty cell with 3 neighbors of one color becomes that color
• Empty cell with 3 neighbors of both colors: random winner

Two-Player Toroidal

• Two-player rules with toroidal wraparound
• Finite grid with player colors

Renderer

• Pygame-based visualization
• Pan and zoom controls
• Menu bar for simulation controls
• Context menu for pattern selection (Ctrl + Right Click)
• Real-time stats (generation, population, speed)
• Optional grid overlay
• Resizable window

Patterns

Built-in patterns organized by category.

Still Lives: Block, Beehive, Loaf, Boat, Tub

Oscillators: Blinker, Toad, Beacon, Pulsar

Spaceships: Glider, Lightweight Spaceship

Methuselahs: R-pentomino, Diehard, Acorn

Guns: Gosper Glider Gun

Breeders: Block-laying Switch Engine

Live Graph

• Population tracking runs in a separate process
• Matplotlib plots population vs generation
• Real-time updates without UI lag

Project Structure

gol/ - Standard Game of Life implementation

gol_toroidal/ - Toroidal variant

p2life/ - Two-player competitive variant

p2life_toroidal/ - Two-player toroidal variant

Each directory contains: engine.py, renderer.py, patterns.py, graph.py, main.py

Features

• Interactive grid manipulation
• Multiple pre-loaded patterns
• Adjustable simulation speed (1-50 gen/sec)
• Zoom and pan the grid
• Pause/resume simulation
• Real-time population and generation tracking
• Live graphing of population over time
• Multiple topology options
• Competitive two-player variant

References

• Wikipedia: Conway's Game of Life
• Life Lexicon: http://www.radicaleye.com/lifepage/