YALife

Description

Yet Another Life Program (based on Conway's Game of Life).

![YALife Screenshot 2021-11-20] (YALife_Screenshot_2021-11-20.png)

(stil can't figure out why my screenshot won't display with MD.)

Notes

On 12/10/2023 I had to recreate this repository since some odd bug in Visual Studio 2022 v18 Pre converted my WinForms application into a console app and I couldn't undo it. Attempts to rollback the commits also failed.

Details

Designed and authored by Dan Rhea.

I wrote this to try out WinForms on the VS 2022 Preview using .NET 6. Note that Visual Studio 2022 has been released as has .NET 6. And now it runs under .NET 8.

I added the ability to scale a life "cell" from 1 to 32. This means that a scale of 4 will draw a live cell that is 4 pixels high and 4 pixels wide. This can be thought of as a zoom, you see less cells but the ones you see are much easier to see.

I have also added a facility where you can create custom .GOL files to predefine an initial pattern. See the file LifeTest.gol for file formating information.

Licensing

I'm licensing this program under the MIT License.

The two classes I mention below that are from StackOverflow.com are covered under the MIT license as well.

Attributions

I don't have copyright information (dates) for the items below so I will go with the following attributions as suggested by StackOverflow.com.

I use the following to apply color to pixels based on how many passes the pixel remains unchanged by the Game of Life rules. It's fun!

ColorHeatMap class by Davide Dolla (https://stackoverflow.com/users/1332133/davide-dolla) and shared on (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17821828/calculating-heat-map-colours)

I use the following to greatly speed up drawing the Game of Life bitmap each pass. I was seeing 1 to 1.5 seconds per pass before with an improvement to 0.01 seconds between passes. Before I was using standard bitmap.setpixel operations.

DirectBitmap by A.Konzel (https://stackoverflow.com/users/3117338/a-konzel) via StackOverflow (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24701703/c-sharp-faster-alternatives-to-setpixel-and-getpixel-for-bitmaps-for-windows-f)

Change history

Detailed program change history is at the top of the Form1.cs code which is where I prefer to keep change history. This is an overview:

• 1.0.1.0 08/12/2021 Initial version
• 1.0.4.0 08/29/2021 Added a color gradient to color persistant cells. The gradient is pretty bland. Need something better.
• 1.0.6.0 09/25/2021 Implemented pixel coloring (continous cycle). This new method is from Davide Dolla on StackOverflow and works exactly the way I want.
• 1.0.7.0 09/28/2021 Added a checkbox to control if persistance colors cycle only once or continously.
• 1.0.10.0 10/16/2021 First compile using VS 2022 RC 1
• 1.0.11.0 10/19/2021 Added a file reader form to display the license and a button on the UI panel to load the reader form with the GPL 3 license.
• 1.0.12.0 10/25/2021 Added a pass timer to show how long (in seconds) it takes to get through both DoLife() and DrawLife().
  • Added an about/spalsh screen (preliminary).
• 1.0.13.0 11/05/2021 Removed the reset debounce as it blocked a proper response to screen size changes. With the debounce, it was seeing and responding to the vertical changes but not the horizontal.
  • Set frame (holds the bitmap) to a minimum of 1, 1 so we never try to create a 0x0 bitmap when minimized. For now coming back from a minimize forces a reset. In the future, if I can detect a minimize and restore, I could try to save the bitmap where the size of Frame doesn't affect it and restore it when we un-minimize the form.
• 1.0.16.0 11/09/2021 Implemented DirectBitmap which greatly improved my draw times. More optimizations by moving the bitmap create and dispose into the reset logic so we only recreate the bitmap if we change size or the blocksize (or click Stop or Reset).
• 1.0.18.0 11/26/2021 Added a "mode" dropdown that will control color cycling or a single non cycling color.
• 1.0.20.0 12/08/2021 Did some refactoring in DoLife with the code that checks for any friends living around us. It's simplified in DoLife but the new 8 functions are a bit jank for now.
• 1.0.22.0 01/27/2022 Added attributions to comments, readme and splash screen for the code used in Paper.cs and Gradient.cs that came from StackOverflow.com.
  • Added a file extention checker for FileReader to limit what files the reader can display (experimenting on some code to use at work)
• 1.0.24.0 03/13/2022 Moved cardnal direction checkers after DoLife() but before DrawLife(). It just seemed to make more sense that way.
• 1.0.26.0 03/31/2022 Changed to the MIT license and started working on a file format to manage pre-defined "GOL" patterns (for example a glider factory). WIP.
• 1.0.34.0 04/18/2024 Did a wholesale rename of my program variables to make them more descriptive.
• 1.0.35.0 05/08/2024 Continuing to try and find out why the DirectBitmap class is broken (the class creates a properly sized bitmap but when it's returned to LifeForm.Setup(), it's empty.
  • Why initializing the dropdown for the color mode has stopped working properly as well (class ColorModes).
  • Redid the code that checks surrounding cells to use a single procedure for all eight compass directions. I also unwound the if statements... they take up a lot more room but are easer to read and follow.
• 1.0.35.0 06/05/2024 Added an exception to catch when an empty bitmap is created. A "changeless" regression. The fun never ends.

Installation

I do not (currently) have a package and install for this program. For now, it needs to be loaded into Visual Studio 2022 and run. I find it difficult to pay for an expensive code signing license for what is in effect a free program I wrote as a hobby/fun/learning/testing project.