congolway

Conway's Game of Life gif and apng generator in Go.

I wanted to make some kind of portmanteau between Conway and Game of Life. Hence congolway.

Features

• Parallel next generation implementation.
• Show Game of Life in terminal.
• Sparse-matrix based storage.
• Storing instances of Game of Life in text files.
• Generation of GIF and APNG animations for your game of life instances.
• Tested and developed following the advice of Go community.
• Support for Plaintext files, i.e. .cells files or Life files (1.05 or 1.06 version).

Construction

Use makefile to create executables in bin directory:

make build

Usage

Stdout output

Shows the game of life in your Linux/MacOS terminal.

Usage of ./bin/golstdout:
  -delay int
        Delay between frames, in milliseconds (default 500)
  -generations int
        Number of generations of the cellular automaton (default 100)
  -inputFilePath string
        File path of the Congolway (.txt), cells (.cells) or life (.life) file
  -procs int
        Number of GO processes used to compute generations. By default is -1 (use as many as hardware CPUs), enter a positive integer to set a custom number of proceses (default -1)

APNG generator

Creates a APNG animation of the Game of Life.

Usage of ./bin/golapng:
  -generations int
        Number of generations of the cellular automaton (default 100)
  -inputFilePath string
        File path of the Congolway (.txt), cells (.cells) or life (.life) file
  -outputFilePath string
        File path where the output apng will be saved (default "out.apng")
  -procs int
        Number of GO processes used to compute generations. By default is -1 (use as many as hardware CPUs), enter a positive integer to set a custom number of proceses (default -1)

GIF generator

Creates a GIF animation of the Game of Life.

Usage of ./bin/golgif:
  -delay int
        Delay between frames, in 100ths of a second (default 5)
  -generations int
        Number of generations of the cellular automaton (default 100)
  -inputFilePath string
        File path of the Congolway (.txt), cells (.cells) or life (.life) file
  -outputFilePath string
        File path where the output gif will be saved (default "out.gif")
  -outputHeight int
        Height of the output gif image. If -1, this image will not be scaled (default -1)
  -outputWitdh int
        Width of the output gif image. If -1, this image will not be scaled (default -1)
  -procs int
        Number of GO processes used to compute generations. By default is -1 (use as many as hardware CPUs), enter a positive integer to set a custom number of proceses (default -1)

SVG generator

Creates a SVG animation of the Game of Life.

NOTE: this tool is in a highly-unstable state and generates extremly heavyweight SVGs. I'm in process of optimizing it. Use it at your own risk.

Usage of ./bin/golsvg:
  -delay int
        Delay between frames, in 100ths of a second (default 1)
  -generations int
        Number of generations of the cellular automaton (default 100)
  -inputFilePath string
        File path of the Congolway (.txt), cells (.cells) or life (.life) file
  -outputFilePath string
        File path where the output gif will be saved (default "out.svg")
  -procs int
        Number of GO processes used to compute generations. By default is -1 (use as many as hardware CPUs), enter a positive integer to set a custom number of proceses (default -1)

Random grid generator

Creates a txt file (see its format) with an (uniformly) random grid.

Usage of ./bin/randomgol:
  -columns int
        Number of columns of the grid (default 100)
  -description string
        Description of the game of life instance that will be created
  -name string
        Name of the game of life instance that will be created (default "Random Gol")
  -outputFilePath string
        File path where the random grid will be saved (.txt, .cells and .life extensions are allowed) (default "out.txt")
  -outputFormat string
        Only used for congolway files (.txt files). File format "dense" or "sparse"
  -randomSeed int
        Random seed
  -rows int
        Number of rows of the grid (default 100)

Spawner

This program fast forwards a number of generations and saves the game of life instance in a file.

Usage of ./bin/golspawner:
  -generations int
        Number of generations of the cellular automaton (default 100)
  -inputFilePath string
        File path of the Congolway (.txt), cells (.cells) or life (.life) file
  -outputFilePath string
        File path where the output .txt will be saved (default "out.txt")
  -procs int
        Number of GO processes used to compute generations. By default is -1 (use as many as hardware CPUs), enter a positive integer to set a custom number of proceses (default -1)

Samples

Using the file samples/grid100x100.txt:

100x100 gif animation

./bin/golgif -inputFilePath="./samples/grid100x100.txt" -outputFilePath="./samples/grid100x100.gif"

Gosper Glider Gun gif animation

 ./bin/golgif -inputFilePath="./samples/gosper_glider_gun.txt" -outputFilePath="./samples/ggg.gif" \
      -outputWitdh=800 -outputHeight=400 -generations=50

100x100 apng animation

./bin/golgif -inputFilePath="./samples/grid100x100.txt" -outputFilePath="./samples/grid100x100.apng"

TODO

• Parallelization must be done by using a threadpool (maybe using this library?).
• Implement version with hashlife. See 1 & 2.
• Multi-valued game of life.
• Make a CellsStorer implementation based on file system.
• Make a distributed CellsStorer implementation.
• Ability to load programs in a game of life. Programs Are a sequence of cell changes indexed by generation. There is also the posibility to have conditional cell changes.
• Desktop app to run a program in a game of life instance:
  • Sync (load programs before start)
  • Async (allow the user to interact with the gol with the mouse)
• Implement a ncurses game of life animation.
• Implement a multiplatform desktop app.
• Implement neighborhood functions.
• Read a game of life from a gif/png still image.
• Include gliders and other patterns.
• Implement Grid as a sparse matrix. Done by using the thread-safe dictionary of keys sparse matrix pattern.
• Implement some kind of application (maybe a Turing machine?) in a Game of Life instance.
• Different neighborhood types.
• Infinite grids by horizontal or vertical directions.
• Encode APNG.
• Define a new format that is more compact (based on sparse matrix). Allow outputting in this format.
• Read the following formats:
  • Plaintext
  • Life 1.05, i.e. .lif or .life files.
  • Life 1.06, i.e. .lif or .life files
  • RLE format
  • Other formats
• Allow definition of multiple rules of spawning. Done based on Life 1.05 rules format.
• Allow cells with more states. In case there is more states, allow definition of custom rules.
• Continous integration.
• Read zipped files. Is it really needed, though?
• Allow extracting size from grid. Is it really needed, though?
• Parallelize.
• Scaling of gif animations.
• Serve in a http server.

Code of Conduct

Everyone interacting in the Congolway project’s codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms and mailing lists is expected to follow the code of conduct.

Contributions

I accept contribution and feature requests via PR (GitHub pull requests).

Create an issue or send me an email before making a PR if you are unsure about if your PR is going to be accepted.

Any suggestion, issue or constructive criticism is also welcomed.

License

MIT