★ AMSTRAD CPC ★ GAMESLIST ★ LIFE (c) AMSTRAD COMPUTER USER ★

Amstrad Computer User 90/4Amstrad Computer User
★ Ce texte vous est présenté dans sa version originale ★ 
 ★ This text is presented to you in its original version ★ 
 ★ Este texto se presenta en su versión original ★ 
 ★ Dieser Text wird in seiner Originalfassung präsentiert ★ 

That's life

More machine code madness as Auntie John Kennedy demonstrates the secrets of life itself. Next month it's back to the serious stuff.

Life must be one of the great computer programming games hi all time. It was invented by the mathematician John Conway in the 1970s and is a program which, by means of a few simple rules, creates patterns of immense complexity, modelling life itself.

Life simulates a colony of cells, showing how they are bom, growr and die in an idealized environment.

The rules which govern the game are as follows: (1) To survive to the next time cycle, each cell must have either two or three neighbours. Less than two and it dies from loneliness, greater than three and it starves. (2) If 3 cells get together, a new cell is bom.

Although these rules may seem trivial, they were decided upon by Conway after studies of the many possibilities. They are not by any stretch of the imagination an accurate representation of a cell culture, only a means to explore such computer generated cellular automata. In other words, it's not realistic, but it looks good.

For your edification and delight, we present you with not one, but two listings for Life. The first is written in Locomotive Basic, mainly to allow you to get a general feel for the formulae involved. It creates a random colony and allows it to grow. Slowly.

The second listing is a specially written machine code masterpiece, operating many, many times faster. It is well worth the time and effort needed to type it in, but remember to save it before running, just in case you have made a mistake. Successive generations appear very quickly indeed, fast enough to watch the patterns grow and change without having to pop out for a cup of tea between frames. There is also an editor built in, so you can design your own cultures and watch them flourish or vanish.

Here are several common patterns that you can experiment with:

  1. The Blob - boring, this one. Just sits and does nothing.
    oo
    oo
  2. Spinner - it goes round, and round, and round . . .
    ooo
  3. Glider - crawls its way off the screen.
    o
    o
    ooo
  4. Honey Farm - this shape evolves into four beehives.
    ooooooo

Instructions for machine code Life: When first run, the program is in editing mode. From here you can:

  • move the cursor around the screen with the arrow keys
  • add or remove cells with the control and copy keys
  • start the cells generating with the G key (stop with Space)
  • clear away all the cells with the C key
  • create a random pattern with the R key
  • return to Basic by pressing the Escape key.

Auntie John will be continuing his machine code tutorial in next month's issue. This month's effort is by way of a little light relief. Auntie sinned some what in the March tutorial in the listings. Line 20 in both ‘Listing 1 - Excitement and really wild tilings' and ‘Listing 2 - More excitement and really wild things' should read ‘20 READ X$' leaving off all the other gobbledegook.

ACU

LIFE
(c) AMSTRAD COMPUTER USER


AUTHOR: JOHN "AUNTIE"KENNEDY

★ YEAR: 1990
★ LANGUAGE:
★ GENRE : ???
★ LiCENCE: LISTING

 

★ AMSTRAD CPC ★ DOWNLOAD ★

Type-in/Listing:
» Life    (Amstrad  Computer  User)    LISTING    ENGLISHDATE: 2016-10-26
DL: 154
TYPE: text
SiZE: 5Ko
NOTE: Uploaded by hERMOL ;

Je participe au site:
» Vous avez des infos personnel, des fichiers que nous ne possédons pas concernent ce jeu ?
» Vous avez remarqué une erreur dans ce texte ?
» Aidez-nous à améliorer cette page : en nous contactant via le forum ou par email.

CPCrulez[Content Management System] v8.7-desktop/c
Page créée en 459 millisecondes et consultée 1074 fois

L'Amstrad CPC est une machine 8 bits à base d'un Z80 à 4MHz. Le premier de la gamme fut le CPC 464 en 1984, équipé d'un lecteur de cassettes intégré il se plaçait en concurrent  du Commodore C64 beaucoup plus compliqué à utiliser et plus cher. Ce fut un réel succès et sorti cette même années le CPC 664 équipé d'un lecteur de disquettes trois pouces intégré. Sa vie fut de courte durée puisqu'en 1985 il fut remplacé par le CPC 6128 qui était plus compact, plus soigné et surtout qui avait 128Ko de RAM au lieu de 64Ko.