Conway's Game of Life Documentation

General

Conway's game of life follows the following rules:

• A dead cell will become alive in the next step if it has exactly three alive neighbors
• An alive cell will become dead in the next step of it has less than one or more than four (both included) alive neighbors

Neighbors are the eight surrounding cells (vertically, horizontally and diagonally).

We provide a naive implementation for the simulation universe using a string to store the universe cells (see detailed information here) as well as a linked list implementation featuring an option for the universe to be expandable (see detailed information here).

Installation

In the terminal:

• To compile a user-ready solution, use make
• To compile a user-ready solution of the naive implementation, use make naive
• To compile a user-ready solution of the linked list implementation, use make linkedlist
• To compile all executables, including tests, use make compile-all
• To compile all executables of the naive implementation, including tests, use make naive-compile-all
• To compile all executables of the linked list implementation, including tests, use make linkedlist-compile-all

Usage

Source textfiles

Universes are loaded from text files formatted as follows:

width height
number_of_steps
universe_cells_state

where universe cells follow the convention . for a dead cell and o for a live one.

Here's an example for a 3x4 universe:

3 4
3
.o..
..o.
ooo.

Command-line usage

• app-naive-loader to load a universe from a source textfile and print it as is to the console, using the naive implementation.

./app-naive-loader filename

Options:
  filename: source textfile (see formatting above)

• app-naive-conway to load a universe from a source textfile and simulate the given amount of steps, using the naive implementation.

./app-naive-conway [-ipt?] filename

Options:
  -i: generate image output for each step
  -p: print simulation steps to the console
  -t: consider the universe as a torus
  -?: print source textfile formatting help
  filename: source textfile to load the universe from

• app-list-loader to load a universe from a source textfile and print it as is to the console, using the linked list implementation.

./app-list-loader filename

Options:
  filemane: source textfile

• app-list-conway to load a universe from a source textfile and simulate the given amount of steps, using the linked list implementation.

./app-list-conway [-ipte?] filename

Options:
  -i: generate image output for each step
  -p: print simulation steps to the console
  -t: consider the universe as a torus
  -e: consider the universe as expandable (incompatible with a torus universe!)
  -?: print source textfile formatting help
  filename: source textfile to load the universe from

Build and run

Use make run-<app_name> [ARGS=""] to build and run an executable (make run-test-naive-conway or make run app-list-conway ARGS="-i file.txt" for example).

Use make valgrind-<app_name> [ARGS=""] to build and run an executable under the valgrind tool.

Tests

We provide a series of tests to verify that all the provided function work properly.
Use make launch-test to execute them all.

See detailed information on the related page here.

Additional features

See detailed information on the related page here.

• Options parser for app-naive-conway and app-list-conway
• Possibility to consider the universe as a torus for both the naive and linked list implementation
• Possibility to consider the universe as expandable for the linked list implementation.
• Decided to use PBM standard for the output images instead of the PPM standard.