dl2n+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU (Daniel Edward Lovinger) (11/22/89)
These packages are now avaliable for anonymous ftp off of expo.lcs.mit.edu (18.30.0.212) in /contrib : -rw-rw-rw- 1 ftp 30 106353 Nov 22 05:37 xlife1.0.tar.Z -rw-rw-rw- 1 ftp 30 279067 Nov 22 05:36 xtrek5.4.tar.Z Xlife is the classic cellular automata game invented by John Conway. It is played on an unbounded universe, using a very quick algorithim. An extensive collection of patterns is bundled along with the source, including the famous glider gun breeder pattern that originated at MIT. Xtrek is the classic X windows shoot 'em up. It has been *extensively* rewritten and cleaned up (from v4.0), and to the best of our knowledge contains *no* bugs (well, messages aren't sending, but ... well, thats' gonna be in the first patch). You can rely on this one :-). The robots no longer cheat, and in our humble opinion are actually much harder than the original. Shows what can happen when a bunch of deranged, caffeiene crazed hackers get into something! In addition, the game is based around a very flexible configuration file setup - anything goes. Custom empires, ships, galaxy configurations, you name it. We think it's Real Nice. Definitely worth the trouble. For those interested, this xlife represents almost no change over what was released on comp.sources.x about a week and a half ago (minor mod to the generate function). Xtrek will be released to comp.sources.x in about one to two weeks depending on 1) how fast we kill the message bug 2) player reports! If all goes well, these will be on the contrib section of the X11 R4 tape (whew! two days under the deadline) ... Have fun! Please send any and all comments to myself, dl2n+@andrew.cmu.edu or any of the other authors. dan lovinger dl2n+@andrew.cmu.edu p.s. i won't be active until next monday. a large turkey 300 miles from here calls ...