LIFE(6)

NAME
life - John Conway's game of life

SYNOPSIS
/usr/games/life

AVAILABILITY
This game is available with the Games software installation option. Refer to for information on how to install optional software.

DESCRIPTION

life is a program that plays John Conway's game of life. It only runs under sunview(1).

When invoked, life will display a window with a small control panel at the top, and a large drawing area at the bottom. You can create pieces in the drawing area with the left button, and erase them with the middle button. When you select Run in the control panel, the pieces will begin to evolve, and the drawing region will update itself at a speed controlled by the slider labeled with Fast and Slow. life keeps track of all the pieces even if they are not visible. The scroll bars surrounding the drawing region can be used to see pieces that have moved out of view. There are some standard patterns that can be drawn by popping up a menu in the drawing subwindow.

The meaning of the items in the first row of the control panel (from left to right) are as follows. If you click on the picture which looks like a tic-tac-toe board, a grid will appear in the drawing region. If you click on Step, the mode will change from run mode (where the pieces update continuously) to step mode (where an update is only done when you click on Step). Following Gen is a number indicating the number of generations that have occurred. The button marked Find will scroll so that at least one piece is in view. This is useful when all the pieces disappear from view. The button marked Clear will clear the drawing region, but leave the other controls unchanged. Reset will reset all the panel controls, but will not erase any of the pieces, and Quit Exits the tool. The second row contains two sliders. The first controls the update speed when in run mode, the second controls the size of the pieces.

SEE ALSO
sunview(1)