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Instructions for LIFE.BA
Originally from Creative Computing, this is a game of life. It documents the life of a colony of organisims that you supply.
In every generation, the members of the colony do one of three things:
1. SURVIVE; every member with two or three neighboring members survives for the next generation.
2. DEATHS; each member with four or more neighbors dies from overpopulation. Every member with one neighbor or
none dies from isolation.
3. BIRTHS; each empty cell adjacent to exactly three (3) members, no more no less, is a birth cell. A new
member is placed on it.
All births and deaths occure simultaneously, and together they constitute a single generation.
The object of this game is to find a starting configuration for the colony that will never die out, and constantly
change.
Each configuration will eventually do one of four things:
1. DIE OUT; the entire colony dies out and the game is lost.
2. become a STILL PATTERN; the colony forms a pattern that cannot change.
3. OSCILLATE; the colony repeats the same two or three patterns forever.
4. HEALTH; a colony that never dies out, and whose patterns never repeat, The Solution.
To enter your configuration, use any character but d or D. You are not limited to the # of lines you may use or the
amount of members you start with.
FOR EXAMPLE:
When the program promts with:
"Enter your Configuration"
use any key,(letter x for instance), to denote the starting positions of the colony members; as in
? xxx (enter)
? x x (enter)
? x x (enter)
When you are finished entering the colony, enter d or D. The computer will then display the starting configuration for the
colony that you have entered.
There are an unlimited amount of solutions to this game. It runs slowly between generations, mainly when the
population gets large. A printout is best since it gives you a "history" of the colony, from beginning to end. This is a
passive game, and might not appeal to those who crave only fast action games. For those who enjoy puzzle games, this one's a
winner!
ENJOY!!!!!!!!
John Mifsud
Further notes by Rick Mendosa: John Conway was the inventor of the original version of the game of life, which is probably the most famous of all computer games. It was published in the book "Basic Computer Games" by Creative Computing.
The game takes more than 14k free memory to run and less than 21k.
I ran Mifsud's test pattern through 50 generations (about 2 hours and 19 pages on the printer) and it was still going strong--often with very human-like patterns.
