A while ago, I made a post on how to organize a coding dojo that was published right after the Python DF community anniversary dojo where I prepared a challenge to create the game of life from John Horton Conway.
To let the challenge more dynamic, I prepared a graphic simulator using pygame so everyone could see the code running visually. The simulator uses all the concepts that we saw on the last posts of this series.
The Game
Game of Life is a game without players. It represents the dynamic of interaction between a group of living beings at a bidimensional plane starting from an initial state and following 4 simple interaction rules.
This plane looks like a table divided into cells, and each cell can be in one of these two states, dead or alive. Besides that, the plane has an infinite dimension but, on our implementation, we going to have a limited space to simplify things.
The starting state we call seed and can you can define it manually or randomly.
The interaction cycle we call generation, and it is the result of the 4 interaction rules applied.
Every cell with less than two live neighbors dies by underpopulation;
Every live cell with two or three live neighbors survives to the next generation;
Every live cell with more than three neighbors dies of overpopulation;
Every dead cell with exactly three neighbors turns alive by reproduction.
There’s no interaction between generations, so if a new cell is born when you go to compute the next cell, it won’t count since it wasn’t alive on this generation.
Implementation
The simulator was made to test the game logic, and it was placed at the simulator.py file while the game.py file has the game of life logic.
The dojo challenge was the following, write a function game_of_life that receives a seed as a 50x50 matrix and return a matrix with the next generation computed:
defcell_check(section):
'''
Run the game of life rules at a 3x3 section to compute
the middle cell
'''# neighbor counter neighbors =0# reference to the center of the section center = section[1][1]
# sums all elements of the sectionfor row in section:
for cell in row:
neighbors += cell
# remove the center cell value to get only the# neighbor count neighbors -= center
# applying the game of life rules# see that rule number two isn't effectively# applied since it doesn't change the state of the center cellif neighbors <=1:
# less than two neighbors, the cell dies of underpopulation center =0elif neighbors ==3:
# exactly three neighbors, the cell is born by reproduction center =1elif neighbors >=4:
# more than three neighbors, the cell dies of overpopulation center =0# returns the center cell valuereturn center
defget_section(matrix, row, col):
'''
Extracts a 3x3 section from the plane given
the center cell coordinate
'''# builds an empty 3x3 section to make the plane section copy section = [[0for _ in range(3)] for _ in range(3)]
# runs through the plane section copying its valuesfor sec_r, r in enumerate(range(row-1, row+2)):
for sec_c, c in enumerate(range(col-1, col+2)):
section[sec_r][sec_c] = matrix[r %50][c %50]
# returns the copied 3x3 sectionreturn section
defgame_of_life(seed):
'''
Receives the 50x50 plane seed, runs the game of life rules
and returns the next generation
'''# creates an empty plane to store the new generation# we don't mutate the seed to prevent side effects next_gen = [[0for _ in range(50)] for _ in range(50)]
# walks through the plane computing the next generation# of each cellfor r, row in enumerate(seed):
for c, col in enumerate(row):
next_gen[r][c] = cell_check(get_section(seed, r, c))
# returns the next generationreturn next_gen
As you can see the game.py code computes only the next generation of the seed which is perfect to use at the simulator.py because we can compute the next generation to display on the screen and then feed the computed generation as a seed to the next one and so forth:
import random
import time
import pygame
from game import game_of_life
# empty planeSEED = [[0for _ in range(50)] for _ in range(50)]
# GliderSEED[23][24] =1SEED[24][25] =1SEED[25][23] = SEED[25][24] = SEED[25][25] =1# Glider gun# SEED[20][30] = 1# SEED[21][28] = SEED[21][30] = 1# SEED[22][18] = SEED[22][19] = SEED[22][26] = SEED[22][27] = SEED[22][40] = SEED[22][41] = 1# SEED[23][17] = SEED[23][21] = SEED[23][26] = SEED[23][27] = SEED[23][40] = SEED[23][41] = 1# SEED[24][6] = SEED[24][7] = SEED[24][16] = SEED[24][22] = SEED[24][26] = SEED[24][27] = 1# SEED[25][6] = SEED[25][7] = SEED[25][16] = SEED[25][20] = SEED[25][22] = SEED[25][23] = SEED[25][28] = SEED[25][30] = 1# SEED[26][16] = SEED[26][22] = SEED[26][30] = 1# SEED[27][17] = SEED[27][21] = 1# SEED[28][18] = SEED[28][19] = 1# Rich's p16# SEED[19][20] = SEED[19][21] = SEED[19][22] = SEED[19][26] = SEED[19][27] = SEED[19][28] = 1# SEED[20][19] = SEED[20][23] = SEED[20][25] = SEED[20][29] = 1# SEED[21][19] = SEED[21][23] = SEED[21][25] = SEED[21][29] = 1# SEED[22][18] = SEED[22][20] = SEED[22][21] = SEED[22][22] = SEED[22][23] = SEED[22][25] = SEED[22][26] = SEED[22][27] = SEED[22][28] = SEED[22][30] = 1# SEED[23][18] = SEED[23][19] = SEED[23][29] = SEED[23][30] = 1# SEED[26][22] = SEED[26][23] = SEED[26][22] = SEED[26][25] = SEED[26][26] = 1# SEED[27][21] = SEED[27][23] = SEED[27][25] = SEED[27][27] = 1# SEED[28][22] = SEED[28][26] = 1# Random# SEED = [[random.choice([0, 1]) for _ in range(50)] for _ in range(50)]pygame.init()
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((550, 550))
defdraw_matrix(matrix):
'''
Function to draw the plane given the matrix
'''# fills the screen with black screen.fill([0, 0, 0])
# walks through the plane drawing its cellsfor r, row in enumerate(matrix):
for c, cell in enumerate(row):
if cell:
# if the cell is alive draw it as a white square pygame.draw.rect(
screen, (255, 255, 255), (11*c, 11*r, 10, 10)
)
# sets the seed as one of the preset values at the topseed = SEED
# draws the initial state of the seeddraw_matrix(seed)
pygame.display.flip()
# waits one second so we can see the initial state before# starting the interaction looptime.sleep(1)
whileTrue:
# INPUT PROCESSING event = pygame.event.poll()
if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
# quits the program if clicked to close the windowbreakelif (event.type == pygame.KEYDOWN and event.key == pygame.K_ESCAPE):
# quits the program on pressing ESCbreak# GAME UPDATE# runs the game of life to get the next generation seed = game_of_life(seed)
# DRAWING# draws the new generation at the screen draw_matrix(seed)
pygame.display.flip()
# waits a brief moment until going to the next generation time.sleep(0.05)
The first drawing is separate from the game loop so the user can see the starting state before running the interactions on a faster pace. Entering inside the game loop we have the input processing step where quit conditions are checked so, moving to the game update step, the next generation is computed, and then, on the drawing step, the new generation is displayed at the screen.
Examples
To demonstrate the simulator working, I choose the glider there is the most famous pattern inside the game of life. The hacker community absorbed it as their emblem, and it is the smaller cyclic pattern that moves on the plane:
