gameRlife

Summary

An R implementation of John Conway's cellular automata Game of Life.

Dependencies

• R
• RStudio

Install the following R packages from within an active R session, e.g.

install.packages("matrixcalc")

• R packages: matrixcalc, dplyr, ggplot2 , gganimate.

Installation

From within an active R session:

install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("alextkalinka/gameRlife")

Usage

Run the Game of Life

• Use one of the in-built random seeds:

gg <- game_of_life(seed_random4,
                   num_gens = 70,
                   board_size = 50)

This will produce the following animation:

• Use a random seed:

seed <- make_seed_random(board_size = 50,
                         proportion_living = 0.4)
gg <- game_of_life(seed,
                   num_gens = 100,
                   board_size = 50)

• Define a specific seed of your own.

For example, the in-built seed_glider is a 5x2 matrix of living cell co-ordinates, with the first column specifying the row and the second column specifying the column:

> seed_glider
     [,1] [,2]
[1,]    2    3
[2,]    3    4
[3,]    4    2
[4,]    4    3
[5,]    4    4

Animate a previous game

The return object of a previous game can be animated without needing to run the simulation again:

# Object 'gg' returned by the function 'game_of_life'.
animate_gol(gg)

# Just run generations 20 to 50.
animate_gol(gg, from = 20, to = 50)

Bugs, issues, requests

Please contact Alex Kalinka

References

Gardner, M. 1970. The fantastic combinations of John Conway's new solitaire game 'life'. Scientific American 223 (4): 120-123.