Conway

Matteo Golin

A Pythonic recreation of Conway's game of life using classic and alternative rules for cell implementation. Games are exported as GIFS.

Requirements

• Python 3.11
• Pillow
• Progress

Usage

Config File

Parameters of the simulation can be changed using the config.json file. The config allows the user to change:

• Epochs: How many generations the simulation should play for
• Dimensions: The size of the simulation area
• Animation:
  • Colours: The colours of alive and dead cells
  • Frame duration: How long each frame of the exported GIF will run for, in ms
  • Scale: The scale multiplier of the simulation GIF
    • If your simulation is 100x100 and your scale is 4, the GIF will be 400x400. Larger scales take more time to process

Code

First, configuration parameters must be loaded using the Config() class. This config will be used to pass simulation parameters specified in config.json to other parts of the code.

Second, a seed must be created. All simulations require a seed to begin the cell growth. A library of seeds is included to make this easy. See the Seeds section. If the simulation needs to be reproduced later, the seed must be exported using the export_seed(<seed>) utility function. This will save the seed to previous_seed.json. Previous seeds can be loaded using the previous_seed() utility function.

Third, a Grid object must be created to host the simulation. The Grid requires dimensions, a number of epochs to run for, a seed and the type of cell that the simulation should use. If the user desires to run the simulation without a specified number of epochs, the continuous keyword parameter should be set to True. This will run the simulation until all cells are detected to have died (hold a static position/oscillate in a stable way).

Exporters

All exporters implement an export method. The export method takes a file path and colour palette (tuple of two hex codes) as parameters. If no colours are provided the exporter will use the 1bit Monitor Glow palette by default.

To export a GIF of the simulation, the Grid object should be passed to a GIFExporter object, along with the configuration settings for scale and the frame duration.

Alternatively, the simulation can be exported using the ImageExporter class. The ImageExporter class requires the Grid, animation scale and step size as arguments. The step size controls after how many epochs a generation snapshot should be saved as an image. Image filenames will be given a numerical suffix.

The file extension of the image can be set via the extension setter on the ImageExporter class. By default, images are exported as PNGs.

Additional Functions

The utility function map_center() can be used to quickly find the center of the Grid using the config dimensions. This streamlines placing seeds in the center of the map.

The utility function percentage_of_map() can be used to calculate how many cells are the given percentage of the map, given the dimensions. This makes ChaosSeed implementations easier because the programmer does not need to eyeball how many cells they need for their seed.

Example usage

    # Start parameters
config = Config()

seed = ChaosSeed(
    cell_number=percentage_of_map(10, config.dimensions),
    deviation=4
).translate(map_center(config.dimensions))
export_seed(seed)  # Export seed

# Create game
print("Starting grid generation...")
grid = Grid(
    cell_type=ClassicCell,
    dimensions=config.dimensions,
    seed=seed,
    epochs=config.epochs,
)
print("Grid generation complete.\n")

# Create exporter
gif_exporter = GIFExporter(
    grid=grid,
    scale=config.animation.scale,
    frame_duration=config.animation.frame_duration,
)

# Export the simulation as a GIF animation in the current directory
print("Running simulation...")
gif_exporter.export(filepath="./animation", colours=config.animation.colours)

Cells

Classic Cell

Maze Cell

Frost Cell

Seeds

Pulsar Seed

Part of the oscillators group.

Middle Spaceship Seed

Part of the spaceship group, where a collection of cells moves in unison across the grid.

Shoebox Seed

A seed that quickly becomes chaotic from very few initial cells.

Pentadecathlon Seed

Part of the oscillators group as well, with a long cycle.