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--- proj [2014/06/23 20:45] – marek
+++ proj [2014/06/25 14:16] – marek
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 **Conway's Game of Life**
-Possibly the most famous CA is Conway's Game of Life (sometimes just called "Life" by aficionados) invented by John Conway in 1970. It is a "game" in the sense that the player assigns the initial state of the game, and can observe its evolution. This game is very well known in computing and mathematics circles, to the point where a propagating Life configuration called a "Glider" (http://www.argentum.freeserve.co.uk/lex_g.htm#glider) has been unofficially adopted as the symbol or mascot for "hackers" in the classic sense i.e. computing enthusiasts (see: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1392).
+Possibly the most famous CA is Conway's Game of Life (sometimes just called "Life" by aficionados) which was invented by John Conway in 1970. It is a "game" in the sense that the player assigns the initial state of the game, and can observe its evolution. This game is very well known in computing and mathematics circles, to the point where a propagating Life configuration called a "Glider" (http://www.argentum.freeserve.co.uk/lex_g.htm#glider) has been unofficially adopted as the symbol or mascot for "hackers" in the classic sense i.e. computing enthusiasts (see: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1983 & ctrl+f search "hacker").
+{{:game_of_life_animated_glider.gif|}}
+Figure 1. A Glider in Life (source: WikiMedia Commons)
 Specifically, Life consists of a two-dimensional lattice of cells that have two possible states: {alive, dead}. Considering a cell's 8-neighbourhood a cell's next state is computed as
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 [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_Life]]
+{{:ca-moore.png|}}
+Figure 2. The red cells are the 8-connected (or Moore Neighbourhood) of the blue cell in the center. (source: WikiMedia Commons)
 Interestingly, it has been demonstrated that the game of life can simulate
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 **Course Project**
-Your project will be to create a Cellular Automata Laboratory with GUI using the Java(tm) programming language. Initially, the application will implement Conway's Game of Life, but will be extensible or reusable to implement other rule-sets. Have a look at http://www.julianpulgarin.com/canvaslife/
+Your project will be to create a Cellular Automata Laboratory with GUI using the Java(tm) programming language. Initially, the application will implement Conway's Game of Life, but will be extensible or reusable to implement other rule-sets for general Cellular Automata. Have a look at http://www.julianpulgarin.com/canvaslife/
 for an idea of potential features, although that example is implemented in
 Javascript. You may also consider the file format demonstrated at