Más de 2,500 Juegos/CD1.iso/ZIPDAT/0578/0578.ZIP/LIFE.DOC

Text File | 1994-06-16 | 14KB | 283 lines

                            The "Game" of Life
                              Copyright 1994

                       Castle Oaks Computer Services
                           Post Office Box 36082
                        Indianapolis, IN 46236-0082

The "Game" of Life is a computer simulation of a universe where the exist-
ence or non-existence of "life" follows certain prescribed rules. It was
developed by Prof. John H. Conway at the University of Cambridge, and it
was first written up by Martin Gardner in his October 1970 "Mathematical
Games" column in Scientific American. Although this simulation does not
depict any real life situation, it is still interesting to see how over- or
under-population affects succeeding generations according to the rules for
this environment.

This implementation is a freeware program. It is copyrighted by Castle
Oaks. You may distribute it freely. However, if you do, you must include
this documentation file in its entirety. The purposes of this program are
to introduce you to the "Game" of Life, to entertain you, and to advertise
other Castle Oaks products. The following lists several Castle Oaks pro-
ducts:

WORDFIND -

a system to help solve word puzzles.  It consists of a vocabulary of over
100,000 words and a program to search that vocabulary for words that match
a template that the user specifies.  Suppose that you have the clue "rid-
dles" and you know the second, fourth, and seventh letters are 'N', 'G',
and 'S' respectively.  You then enter the template, ?N?G??S, and the pro-
gram returns these words that fit the template.

ENIGMAS KNIGHTS ONAGERS

Wordfind includes a special feature that is useful in solving cryptograms.
The wild cards '-', '+', and '=' are reserved to indicate duplicate but un-
known letters.  Thus, the template, -+=+=B-???+, means to find all words
where the 1st and 7th letters are the same, the 2nd, 4th, and 11th letters
are the same, the 3rd and 5th letters are the same, and the 6th letter is a
'B'. WORDFIND will return "REMEMBRANCE" which is the only word that fits
that template.

Utilities are provided for modifying the vocabulary or for creating addi-
tional vocabularies. Also, three auxiliary vocabularies are available at a
cost of $15.00 per set. Set A has over 174,000 unusual words and words of
variant spellings. Set B has over 135,000 entries which consists of expres-
sions, all words in the old and new testaments, armament terms, and places
names. They are divided into seven subsets. Set C has over 167,000 entries
in subsets of Latin, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Jewish, and Literary
terms.

WORDFIND contains a feature called UNAGRAM which unscrambles anagrams.
Registration fee for WORDFIND is $15.00.

CROSSWORDS PUZZLE SOLVER -

This is a credit card size device that provides some of the same features
as WORDFIND. It is handy to carry with you when you do not have access to
your computer. This is a product of Franklin Electronic Publishers, Inc.
The suggested retail price is $49.95. You may order it from Castle Oaks for
$40.00 plus $5.00 shipping and handling.

CLUEFIND -

Similar to WORDFIND but the user builds his own vocabularies with clues
included with the words. Cost is $10.00.

TEXTFIND -

This program allows you to provide a template with known characters (even
non-alphabetic ones) and wild cards for unknown characters.  Then using
this template, you may search any file (even executable ones) for character
strings that match the given template.  TEXTFIND registration is $10.00.

HINTHUNT(TM) -

a program to generate word search puzzles.  Great for teachers.  Includes
options for simpler puzzles and the capability for the word list and puzzle
words to be different. Particularly useful for foreign language vocabulary
drills. Cost of HINTHUNT(TM) is $15.00.


TRAC/TRAP -

a tutorial on the machine and assembly languages of a pseudo computer.
This provides an introduction to these concepts.  The package includes the
pseudo computer simulator and assembly programs; lessons in their use;
example TRAC and TRAP programs; and exercises with answers.  Registration
fee for TRAC/TRAP is $10.00.

TO - FROM Utilities -

programs to convert files of 8-bit characters to files of 7-bit characters
and vice versa.  If you ever need to upload a file to a host computer that
cannot accept 8-bit characters (for example, MCI Mail), this system will
allow you to do so.  Also, some communication packages will only allow
ASCII characters (7-bit characters) to be transmitted.  Perhaps you have a
spreadsheet or a database that you wish to upload to a host for repository
and for later downloading to your own or other computers.  You can use
these utilities and the only penalty will be a slight increase in file size
(approximately 33%).  Registration fee for the TO - FROM Utilities is
$10.00.

GAME PACKAGE -

     TOWERS - This is a game and more. It is the Towers of Hanoi puzzle. In
     this puzzle you have 3 towers; on one tower are disks of different
     sizes. The object of this puzzle is to move all the disks, one at a
     time, to another tower such that you never place a larger disk on top
     of a smaller disk. With this package you can try to solve the puzzle;
     you may watch the program give the minimum move solution; and the
     package provides a selection of 5 screen savers.

     CARD MATCH - A concentration type game. It uses a standard deck of
     playing cards. These are to be matched in pairs. Three levels of play
     are provided and you may play alone or against an opponent. Although
     there are many games like this available, this one does not require an
     advanced graphics card. It will run on CGA.

     HURKLE - A game to find the "Hurkle" in a 15 x 15 grid.

The game package is freeware. It may be obtained for a shipping and han-
dling fee of $5.00.

You may obtain the latest copy of 'The "Game" of Life' by sending a ship-
ping and handling fee of $5.00 to Castle Oaks.

OTHER ARTICLES -

There have been several articles written about the "Game" of Life. Two
articles were published in the December 1978 issue of Byte magazine and
another one in the January 1979 issue of Byte magazine. The latter is only
of historical interest. That article explores methods of writing a program
to minimize the amount of memory required. In those days, personal
computers only had a few K of memory.

The other two article in Byte give a very good description of the simula-
tion and they analyze and name various starting patterns and what results
from those starting patterns. Included in this package are 14 starting
patterns that were described in those articles. Other patterns also were
described but I will leave it up to you to look up those patterns and/or
create patterns of your own. Later, I will describe the patterns included.

INTRODUCTION -

In most implementations, it is assumed that the environment of the simula-
tion is a two-dimensional plane that is infinite. This, of course, is not
practical. Due to computer limitations, there are edges to the plane. In
order to avoid that, this implementation uses the surface of a torus as the
environment. In this way, the environment is finite, but unbounded. Fur-
thermore, so that this program can be run on a minimal machine, CGA charac-
ter graphics are used.

On the screen, you will see a window that is 21 lines tall and 38 columns
wide. You must visualize the environment as having the top of the window
joined to the bottom of the window; and the right edge of the window joined
to the left edge of the window. In some simulations, you will see groups of
occupied cells leave one edge of the screen and re-appear at another edge
of the screen. Although the window is not very large, it is usally large
enough for most purposes.

RULES -

1. If a cell (occupied or not) has exactly 3 neighboring cells occupied,
then the given cell will be occupied in the next generation.

2. I