208 CSCI Assessment Programming Assignment
Write a program that implements Conways game of life. The Game of life really isnt a game. It is a cellular automaton. The game is played on a grid. Think of gluing the sides of the grid together so that the squares on the right side are adjacent to squares on the left side. Also, think of gluing the top and bottom sides of the grid together so that squares on the top are adjacent to squares on the bottom. Thus, the grid is not flat, but lies on a torus (donut). When you think about the grid lying on a torus, each square has exactly 8 neighboring squares. Each square in the grid can be alive or dead. In the grid below, the living squares have an X in them.
Square with 3 living neighbors
X X
Square with 8 neighbors X
1 2 3 8 4 7 6 5 X X X
X X X
Square with 2 living neighbors
Square with 3 living neighbors
Square with no living neighbors
Square with 4 living neighbors
X
X X X X X
Square with 1 living neighbor
X X
The game is played by applying the following rules on each iteration of the game: 1) If a square has exactly 3 living neighbors if becomes alive. If it is already alive it stays alive. 2) If a square has exactly 2 living neighbors it stays the way it was. That is, if it is dead it stays dead and if it is alive it stays alive. 3) For any other situation the square is set to dead
Below is what the grid above will look like after one application of rules
X the X
X
X X X
X X X X X X X
Programming Requirements The main class of your program should be called GameOfLife. It should provide a constructor taking a boolean argument indicating whether or not the game should provide a user interface. Your program should allow the user to click on a square to flip it from dead to living or living to dead. The main class should also provide the method void setAlive( int column, int row, boolean squareAlive ); to allow the state of a square to be set programmatically. The main class must also implement the method boolean isAlive( int column, int row ); to allow programmatic access to the state of a square. There should be a start button. When the user pushes the start button the program should apply the game rules to the grid at one-second intervals (use a timer) and display each new grid. The...