Conway's Game of Life Project

The Processing starter kit for this project can be downloaded here.

Your mission is to write a program that presents Conway's Game of Life. There are loads of examples of how this can be achieved on the Internet. However, looking up the results and copying them (or even roughly copying them) is not a particularly productive learning experience. If you get really, really, REALLY stuck or, if you have finished, I have no objection to your looking at a solution as long as you don't copy it.

Really, really, REALLY stuck means the following (in this order):

  1. You are personally stuck.
  2. Your group is collectively stuck.
  3. You have given a real effort to talk to other groups, and yet you and your group are stuck.
  4. You have asked me for help, and yet you are completely stuck.
  5. You have tried to write a program, rather than writing nothing, hoping that some superhero will come to your aid.

In other words, you need to demonstrate some serious, participatory effort. Being passive for a couple of days and then asking for help won't cut it with me. If you were working in "the real world", you would be expected to do your best before you escalate your problem to management. I expect the same.

Another thing I will be looking for is adhering to the functional specification of the problem, based both on the rules of the game and the problems, below. While writing programs is a creative endeavor, if you are a consultant or employee asks you to perform a specific task, if you wish to deviate, you will need to get permission from the person who pays you. For the purposes of this problem, I, as the teacher, am the permission-giver.

Here are the only places you are allowed to change code:

  1. The name of the CGoL_Starter_Kit tab should be changed to CGoL. (You can rename using the down arrow to the right of the last tab.)
  2. In the CGoL tab, the draw() method requires some changes in four places.
  3. In the Cell tab, the following methods require code:

If you finish the project and want to augment the program, that's fine. But first get the basics done.

The rules for Conway's Game of Life can be seen at this link.