BFOIT Introduction to Programming Arrays    The Game of Life

Introduction

In this lesson, you will learn

The Game of Life

A cellular automaton is a collection of "colored" cells on a grid of
specified shape that evolves through a number of discrete time steps
according to a set of rules based on the states of neighboring cells.
The rules are then applied iteratively for as many time steps as
desired. (from http://mathworld.wolfram.com/CellularAutomaton.html).

The "Game of Life" is played on a grid.  The squares of the grid are called cells.  A cell that is alive is colored in.  The rules for Life are simple.  They are:

1. In order for a cell to remain alive, it must have two or three neighbors.
2. If a live cell has less than two neighbors, it dies (loneliness).
3. If a live cell has more than three neighbors, it dies (over-crowdedness).
4. If an empty cell has exactly two neighbors, it comes to life.

A cell's neighbors are the eight cells which surround it (to its north, northeast, east, etc...).

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Game of Life Applet

Here is a Java applet.  Draw some patterns by clicking the left mouse button on squares to bring them to life.  Then click on the [Step] button to watch what happens as the rules are applied in one cycle of Life.

New TurtleTalk Procedures Used In This Lesson
Name	Input	Description	Example
ARRAY	size	Outputs an array of size members, each of which is initially an empty sentence. Size must be a positive integer.	MAKE "nums ARRAY 5
FLOOR	number	Outputs the largest integer (closest to positive infinity) that is not greater than number.	FLOOR 12.875
SETITEM	index array value	Replaces the indexth member of array with value.	SETITEM 2 :nums "two