HARPER@finfun.bitnet ("Robert Harper ", Finland) (07/14/89)
IN COMP.BINARIES.IBM.PC there was a recent posting regarding the latest implimentation of LIFE. I enclose the editorial so you can see what the new programme offers. --------------------original----------------------------- Submitted-by: Anibal Acero <acero@tank.uchicago.edu> Archive-name: aaalife/part01 Lines: 625 AAALIFE is a very fast implementation of Conway's Life using high resolution graphics. [The archive contains] aaalife.c (the source code with more explanatory comments), aaalife.exe the executable program which supports EGA/VGA, CGA and Hercules graphics, makelife.bat a batch file showing the Turbo C switches used to compile the program, and rpent.lif, a data. tony acero [ In the seventies John Conway, a mathematician, invented a set of rules for the growth of cells. He called it the game of Life. Martin Gardener popularized this in his "Mathematical Games" column in the Scientific American. Numerous articles appeared about Life in computer magazines, and there was even a newsletter (called "Lifelines," I think) dedicated to this game. If you're new to the microcomputer world, you might want to go through old issues of Byte, to capture some of the excitement the old days when microcomputers were in their infancy and a lot of people (mostly wives of hobbyists) were asking, "But what do you DO with it?" For many, the best answer they could find was, "Well...er...you can play Life with it" (word processing hadn't yet been invented). What is fascinating about Life was that its rules are extremely simple, yet they can result in complex "organisms" some of which recreate themselves at intervals, some of which move at a steady rate, and one or two that actually shoot out projectiles. I seem to remember an old issue of Byte that was dedicated to Life. This implementation is colorful and fast. The data file needs to be edited by hand to initialize the configuration, but one configuration is included. Be patient: it may seem rather slow. Supports CGA, VGA, EGA, and HGC. ---------------------------------end--------------------------------- -=ROB=-