Game of Life

A terminal implementation of Conway's Game of Life written in Go. This cellular automaton transforms your terminal into a dynamic playground for exploring various patterns and behaviors.

Features

• Multiple Patterns: Choose from predefined patterns like blinker, toad, beacon, glider, and more
• Customizable Colors: Configure cell and background colors through JSON configuration
• Flexible Settings: Adjust FPS and other behaviors via config file or command-line arguments
• Interactive Controls: Pause, resume, and step through generations manually

Installation

Prerequisites

• Go 1.21 or later

Install from Source

git clone https://github.com/dmcg310/game-of-life.git
cd game-of-life
make install

Quick Build

make build

Usage

Basic Usage

# Run with default settings
make run

# Run with specific pattern and FPS
make run-pattern PATTERN=glider FPS=30

# Or use the binary directly
./bin/game-of-life [pattern] [fps]

Available Commands

# Show available patterns
make patterns

# Show configuration directory
make config-location

# Show help
make help

Controls

• p: Pause/resume the simulation
• Space: Step through one generation when paused
• q/Esc/Ctrl+C: Quit the program

Configuration

The program looks for gol-config.json in the current directory or your system's config directory:

{
    "preset": "random",
    "cell-color": "white",
    "background-color": "black",
    "fps": 23
}

Available Patterns

• blinker, toad, beacon, lwss, gosper-glider-gun, glider, block, random

Supported Colors

• black, maroon, green, olive, navy, purple, teal, silver
• gray, red, lime, yellow, blue, fuchsia, aqua, white

Development

Build Commands

make all          # Clean, format, vet, and build
make build        # Build the application
make dev-build    # Build with race detection
make clean        # Clean build artifacts

Code Quality

make fmt          # Format code
make vet          # Vet code
make tidy         # Tidy dependencies

Cross-Platform Builds

make build-all    # Build for Linux, Windows, and macOS
make release      # Create release archives

Project Structure

game-of-life/
├── cmd/                    # Application entry point
├── internal/
│   ├── cli/               # Command-line interface
│   ├── config/            # Configuration management
│   ├── display/           # Terminal display handling
│   ├── errors/            # Error handling
│   └── game/              # Core game logic and grid
├── Makefile               # Build automation
└── gol-config.json        # Default configuration

References

• Conway's Game of Life - Original concept
• tcell - Terminal interface library
• cli - Command-line interface framework