This is John Horton Conway's game of life for the AT&T UNIX PC.


How to make it:

Type "make" to compile life.  Typing "make install" will also install
life in /usr/games and life-patterns in /usr/local/lib.


How to use it:

Just run it.  There are no arguments.  Stop it by giving it a SIGINT or
SIGTERM or by typing any key (except a digit) to the display window.
Typing digit n will set the time to sleep between generations to n/10 of
a second.

Pressing the middle mouse button freezes or resumes animation, and
pressing the right mouse button kills all the cells.  When the left
mouse button is pressed *down* the cursor changes from a tiny dot
(which, by the way, will disappear completely if placed in the upper
right corner of the screen) to a life cell, which can be placed on the
screen by releasing the button.  Depositing the new cell on an old cell
kills them both.

When the arena gets into a stable configuration (all dead, completely
static or a pattern repeating every 63 generations or less), a glider or
spaceship will be injected to stir up the action.  After a few tries at
this, the screen will be cleared and a starting pattern will be randomly
selected from the file /usr/local/lib/life-patterns.  Note that the cell
arena extends a ways beyond the boundaries of the visible screen, so an
apparently static configuration may be active off-screen.

Please send me any interesting new startup patterns that you discover
(karl@MorningStar.Com or karl@zip.UUCP).

Have fun!

P.S.  Send me email if you want my xlock driver.

@(#)README	1.2
