This is no-nag shareware. So please distribute it to everyone you know, but make sure all of these text files and stuff go with it. Do NOT, however, distribute modified copies. You may modify it if you must, but if it's something you think others might find useful, why don't you tell me about it? That way I can make include your chages in the official version, and you get your name out to the public. Neat, eh? And I hate shareware that nags constantly for money, so this program won't. Look at it like this: I have created a program and given it to you. If you like it, by all means, send me some money! If you fiddle with it a bit every week, send me five bucks or something. If you love it to death and use it constantly, send me more. Do remember I'm a college student and even a dollar or two will be greatly appreciated. Oh, and if you are in a foreign country and have trouble getting your hands on American dollars, don't worry about it– go ahead and send me a bit of your local currency. That'd be fun, for me at least...
• Memory, colors, bugs, etc.
Better Than Life is still very much a piece of beta software, and as yet has hardly lived up to its name. However, with your help is soon really can be better than life. I have worked hardest (so far) on getting the graphics to work well. It should run ok in the backround, on different color levels, etc. It should even be able to work if you change the color level on a monitor while it's running. However, I have not been able to test all this terribly well, so if you have problems, please mail me and tell me what's going on. That way I can fix things so that the first 'real' version really will be compatible and stable.
This version assumes you have system 7.x, I believe, but should now work on both 680x0 machines, as well as native on PowerMacs. Again, if you have any problem getting it to work on your Mac, please mail me and tell me what it's doing.
Note that this program requires a couple meg of memory to run under Millions of colors, but the fewer colors you use when you start it, the less memory it'll need and the faster it'll go. And the uglier it'll look. But that's life *grin*. If you increase the number of colors after it's running, it will still use the less memory and the uglier look. If it takes a long time for the main window to come up when you first run it... well, I dunno what to tell you. I'm working on it. For now, just wait for it to come up. It won't crash, honest. *wink*
• Mutual support, etc.
If you create any cool life boards, please send them to me! If I think they're cool too, then I'll distribute them with future versions of Better Than Life. You can uuencode and mail'em to me if you, or if that's too hard, then email me and we can find an FTP site to use or something.
Anyway, check out the "Changes Log" for changes in the past and hopes for the future. If you'd like to add to the wish list, just let me know! And thanks to all of you who mailed me after version 1.0b1 first came out. Your past support has been really appreciated, and I hope you will continue to help me find bugs as I go along.
• What the Game of Life is, etc.
The rules of the game are simple and were originally described my some mathmetician whose name I've forgotten. Anyway, what happens each generation is that each cell on the board is either switched on or off depending on the state of the cells that surround it. Each cell is processed in the following manner: All eight of the cells surrounding the current one are checked to see if they are on or not. Any cells that are on are counted. This count is then used to determine what will happen to the current cell. If the count is less than 2 or greater than 3, the current cell is switched off. If the count is exactly 2, the current
cells is left unchanged. If the count is exactly 3, the current cell is switched on.
