[comp.archives] [graphics] Re: 3D Life

sigma@jec302.its.rpi.edu (Kevin J Martin) (03/23/91)

Archive-name: games/life/sigma-3dlife/1991-03-22
Archive: export.lcs.mit.edu:/contrib/3dlife.c [18.30.0.238]
Original-posting-by: sigma@jec302.its.rpi.edu (Kevin J Martin)
Original-subject: Re: 3D Life
Reposted-by: emv@msen.com (Edward Vielmetti, MSEN)

gsb19079@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Gerald Scott Bradley) writes:
>Thanks to those who answered some of my questions before...now here's another:
>Does a 3D version of Life exist, and if so what are the rules and where could
>I get a hold of a copy?

This topic certainly caught my eye!

A three-dimensional simulation of the game of Life (per Conway) was the
first project assigned in my Graphical Human-Machine Interfaces course.  I
would suspect that no less than twenty people have their own versions of 3D
Life complete at this point - I demo'ed mine for the professor just this
afternoon!

Anyway, mine runs under X/Windows, and is kind of attractive on a
SparcStation (while I was developing it on an IBM XStation, it was
murderously slow).  In a shocking departure from the traditional self-
serving approach, I've made the code public domain and FTP'ed it to:

export.lcs.mit.edu: /contrib/3dlife.c
uunet.uu.net: /tmp/3dlife.c
wuarchive.wustl.edu: /pub/3dlife.c

Of course, it's nothing fantastic, so I'm not losing the million dollar
opportunity, you realise.  Oh, just to clarify, it's a variation of Life
where two armies battle (and you can introduce poison plants onto the
battlefield) for dominance.  You can change some #define's to get different
rules, and you can pick the cube size while the program's running.  One
thing which is less than obvious from the code (and when running the
program) is that you can click on cells to modify their contents;
otherwise, you're stuck with the random setups the computer generates.

You need the Athena Widget Set, and I don't know what happens if you don't
have color.

If someone with X/Windows but without FTP wants to see it, I can send it
out if requested (just 19K).

-- 
Kevin Martin
sigma@rpi.edu