Describe Life

Life is a mathematical simulation game described by John Conway in Scientific American in Oct. 1970.

Keywords: Life, cellular automata, Newt, NewtonScript, mathematical simulation, Conway

Life Rules

Several rules are used to create a next generation from a cell's 8 neighbors:

0|0|0
0|?|0
0|0|0

Use Life

Tap i:Help to view this document as an embedded help book

Use Life (cont.)

Gestures:

Sample Patterns

...to try (some in pattern picker):

blinker: flips
OOO
glider: down&left 1 in 4 steps
 0
O
OOO
block: stable
OO
OO
beehive: stable
 OO
O  O
 OO
5 long: turns into "traffic lights" (4 blinkers) in 9 steps
OOOOO

More Patterns

7 long: "honey farm" (4 beehives)
OOOOOOO
9 long: double traffic lights
OOOOOOOOO

If you have Newt's Cape installed, and you have added a helper app for .lif files (via the helplifi.htm installer application, you can download (small) patterns directly into the Life application.

Life Versions

The article "Life with NewtonScript" by David Betz in Byte, March 1994, pp. 191-194 provides some introduction/background -- and a challenge to develop more efficient versions.

Life created with NewtDevEnv; it's 1.x/2.x compatible. Help book created from this HTML document by Newt's Cape.

Version 1.5 (26 Mar 1998)

Distribute Life

The "game of Life" is freeware, and may be distributed freely as long as all of the files are included and unmodified. You are free to make modifications to the source for your own use.

© Copyright 1994-2017, S. Weyer. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

Modify Life

If you would like to construct and modify Life directly on your Newton, obtain the latest shareware versions of

NewtDevEnv (aka "Newt")
an environment for developing applications and saving as packages directly on your Newton
Sloup
a text/data transfer utility

See implementation information in life.txt