An implementation of Conway's Game of Life using NodeJS and NCurses.
npm install cursedlifeAn implementation of Conway's Game of Life using NodeJS and ~~NCurses~~ Blessed.
"But Paul, why build yet another Game of Life simulator for NodeJS?"
Haha! The answer is simple, my friends:
- I wanted to.
- Mine is different.
- The others I found were slightly confusing, and didn't allow custom rulesets.
Since version 2.0, this project uses the blessed library in place of node-ncurses.
The node-ncurses project wasn't being actively supported, and didn't work on newer
versions of Node (eg. 0.12) for a long time. Blessed is slightly less performant, but
has much better compatability than the node-curses project ever had. Unfortunately
there is already a Game of Life simulator written in blessed, so I lose a little bit
of uniqueness. However, I think that I've done enough differently in this project
that it's still worthwhile even after the switch.
``bash`
$ npm install -g cursedlife
Simply run the program from command line:
`bash`
$ cursedlife
Once it's running, the program can accept several commands to control
the simulation:
- start : Will unpause the simulationstop
- : Will pause the simulationnext
- : Will advance the simulation by one generationclear
- : Will clear the entire screen, turning all cells off.load
- : Will allow you to load a JSON configuration file.set
- : Will allow you to set the speed, survivalrate, etc.
Simply start typing; the text will appear in the input panel along
the bottom of the window. Hit 'ENTER' to submit your command.
Use the arrow keys to move the cursor in the output panel. Hitting
'ENTER' will toggle the currently selected cell.
; eg. load patterns/gospergun.jsonThe load command looks for files in the directory that the
program was executed from. For example, if you cd to a directory
full of JSON files before running
, all of those
files will be accessible to the program without having to type
the full path.The files should be JSON, and should follow the this template:
`json
{
"posChar": "@",
"negChar": " ",
"birthrate": 3,
"surviverate: 23,
"state": [
[false, false, false, false],
[false, false, true, true ],
[false, false, true, true ]
]
}
`
Note that all of the values are optional; you can have a JSON
file that specifies only state, birthrate and surviverate, or
any other combinations.Release History
$3
Re-wrote the UI fully to use blessed in place of node-ncurses.$3
Implemented a command. Also implemented the ability
to move a cursor using the arrow keys, and toggle a specific
cell using the ENTER key.Bumped the major version number; these are all of the originally
planned features, so I'm calling it the 1.0 release!
$3
The load command is now able to read other configuration
options. For example, you can specify birthrate, surviverate
and negative/positive characters in the JSON.$3
Partially implemented the load command.Loading JSON files from a patterns directory works. Currently,
only simulation state is read from the JSON. The ability to
read other configuration data from the JSON is planned.
Example:
-
load patterns/gospergun.json$3
Implemented the command for all variables that can be user defined.Surviverate and birthrate are sets of integers from 0-8. A surviverate of
23 indicates that a cell will survive if it has either 2 or 3 active
neighbours. Interval is the time, in ms, between each generation.
Examples:
-
set surviverate 246
-
-
-
-
- $3
First working release. Many things are not implemented, but the following should work:
-
-
- Copyright (c) 2014 Paul McMonagle. Licensed under the MIT license.
[npm-url]: https://npmjs.org/package/cursedlife
[npm-image]: https://badge.fury.io/js/cursedlife.svg
[travis-url]: https://travis-ci.org/pmcmonagle/CursedLife
[travis-image]: https://travis-ci.org/pmcmonagle/CursedLife.svg?branch=master
[daviddm-url]: https://david-dm.org/pmcmonagle/cursedlife.svg?theme=shields.io
[daviddm-image]: https://david-dm.org/pmcmonagle/cursedlife
[coveralls-url]: https://coveralls.io/r/pmcmonagle/cursedlife
[coveralls-image]: https://coveralls.io/repos/pmcmonagle/cursedlife/badge.png