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Conway's Game of Life

Watch the patterns created!

Sorry Java is required to play this game.

The original game of life was invented by mathematician John Conway. The idea is to initialize the screen with a pattern of bacteria with the mouse or by pressing the "R" button to fill the screen with a random pattern of bacteria. Toggle pause off to bring life to the colony. The population increases and decreases according to fixed rules which affect the birth and death of individual bacterium. A rectangular grid (2-dimensional matrix) will be shown on the screen. Each cell in the grid can contain a bacterium or be empty. Each cell has 8 neighbors. The existence of cells from one generation to the next is determined by the following rules:

  1. A bacteria with 2 or 3 neighbors survives from one generation to the next. A bacterium with fewer neighbors dies of isolation. One with more neighbors dies of overcrowding.
  2. An empty cell spawns a bacteria if it has exactly three neighboring cells which contain bacteria.
You can create new bacteria on the fly with the mouse or you can clear the screen with the "C" button.

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Last revised January 19, 1998.

URL: http://webcom.com/~duane1/java/life/life.html

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Duane Bristow (oldky@webcom.com)

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All contents copyright (C) 1998, Duane Bristow. All rights reserved.