\gXlife(6)                                                                Xlife(6)

\bNAME

\g Xlife - Conway's Game of Life and other cellular automata for Amstrad CPC 6128.

\bDESCRIPTION

\g The program helps the user play with John Horton Conway's "Life" game.

\bCOMMANDS

 \x!  Place random cells on the area of the universe on the screen.
 \x%  Set a percentage density for a randomly filled area.  Default is 42%.
 \x+  Zoom the view in.  This mode is up to 25% faster.
 \x-  Zoom the view out.
 \x.  Place cursor to the center  of  universe.
 \x?  Help for xlife.
 \x@  Toggle disk drive letter at the load menu.
 \xB  Benchmark. Enter number  of  generations and get time.   This  is  also  the
    fastest  mode of the evolution.
 \xC  Clear the universe.
 \xE  Toggle pseudocolor display mode.  In this mode, the new cells are  shown  in
    the extra color.  It is about 10% slower.
 \xg  Toggle running the game.  Evolve/Stop.  Then step through generations  until
    something exceptional happens, like still life or a key pressed.
 \xh  (Hide) stop  displaying  after  each generation.  This mode  is  up  to  40%
    faster than established by g-command at the zoomed out mode.
 \xl  Load (actually add) pattern  to  the universe from a  file.  This  lets  you
    overlay multiple saved states to make for some interesting  effects.  Loaded
    pattern is (default) initially considered tentative, and  maybe  manipulated
    in various ways before incorporating it into  main  pattern.   (To  indicate
    this, it's  surrounded by a bounding box.)  Clear the  universe if you  want
    to start from scratch.  It is possible either to select pattern at the  dir-
    ectory list directly or to enter the pattern name.
 \xL  Immediately reload, at the cursor, a copy of the  last  pattern  loaded.  It
    doesn't work for ramdisk pattern.
 \xo  Forward one generation.
 \xQ  Quit.
 \xR  Change the (2-state) rules in "stays alive on" / "born  on".   The  standard
    rules are 23/3 (alive on two or three neighbors, birth  on  three  neighbors
    for an empty cell).
 \xS  Save the universe to a file.  It is correct to save to the existed file  but
    no warning message is provided.
 \xT  Set up the topology.  It is possible to use the rectangular  area  with  the
    connected edges (anchor ring,  tore) or the rectangular plain.
 \xv  View current pattern information.
 \xV  View comments to a file.
 \xX  Reload palette from the file "colors.cfg".  This file is loaded automatical-
    ly at the start of the program.
 \xZ  Set and optionally save a palette.

 Use (\rshift\g +) \rcursor keys\g and \rHome\g key to move the cursor.  Use \rspace  bar\g  to
 change the cell under cursor.

\bSTATUS BAR

\g It shows number of generations, the total sum of live cells, the  slowness  in-
 dicator (100% means the maximum slowness), the rules, and the  cursor coordina-
 tes.

\bLIMITS

\g It is possible to see only up to 99 files from the disk directory.  Use mask to
 show only matched files.

 The tentative pattern may show only up to 1024 cells.  The other cells are  not
 shown but loaded later.  This quantity is enough to show the every cell from  a
 pattern file with the size up to 2 KB.

 The universe size is 160x192.

 The rules with "born on" condition 0 are not supported.

 The files on ramdisk are without comments.

\bFORMATS

\g The first two bytes of a pattern file are the number of  cells.   The next  two
 bytes of a pattern file are width and  height.  The next  two  bytes  describes
 "stay alive on" condition, and the next two - "born on".  The next contents are
 the sequence of X and Y  coordinate pairs of live cells.  The patterns have  to
 have 8L filename extension.

 The file with comments  must have the same name as  the  corresponding  pattern
 filename.  The comments' file is a common plain text file.  It maybe edited  by
 any editor.

\bUsing the "lifeconv" utility

\g This utility  from Xlife  main  sources may convert CELLS, LIF, L, RLE, and MCL
 formats. It may be used from any relative to Unix OS or from Microsoft Windows.
 The lifeconv utility takes a pattern name as an argument.  It writes a file  to
 standard output that contains an equivalent version of the pattern in a  diffe-
 rent format.  Usage is:

   \plifeconv pattern -4 >destination\g

 where destination is any valid file name.  The "-4" option sets the format  for
 8-bit Xlife for the destination file is written.  At  Microsoft  Windows  envi-
 ronment (Mingw Xlife port) the sign \p>\g must be omitted.

 The file produced requires a small CPC adoptation.  It is necessary  to  add  2
 byte header to it. This header has to contain number of cells in the file. This
 number may be easily calculated.  We should get the file length in bytes,  sub-
 truct 6 from it and divide the result by 2.  The low byte should be  first  and
 and the high byte second. The utility "raw2cpc" may do the required adoptation,
 e.g.,

   \praw2cpc in-file out-file.8l\g

 This utility is the script depended on several Unix utilities.  It requires the
 presence of "bash", "awk", and "cat" programs at the  system.  The  appropriate
 comments file should have the same name as 8l-file, the  txt-extension, and its
 content may be any textual data.


\bRAMDISK

\g It contains 10 patterns:

\pglider gun\g  The Gosper glider gun is the first known gun, and indeed  the  first
        known finite pattern with unbounded growth, found by Bill Gosper in Nov-
        ember 1970.

\psmall fish\g the lightweight spaceship (or LWSS) is the smallest orthogonally mov-
        ing spaceship, and the second  most common spaceship.  Random soups will
        emit one LWSS for approximately every 615 gliders.  It moves at c/2  and
        has period 4.

\pHWSS\g    the heavyweight spaceship is the fourth most common ship.               

\pr-pentomino\g a methuselah that was found by John Conway in 1970. It is by far the
        most active polyomino with fewer than six cells; all of the others  sta-
        bilize in at most 10 generations, but the  R-pentomino does  not  do  so
        until generation 1103, by which time it has a population  of  116.   The
        glider it releases in generation 69, was the  first  glider ever  obser-
        ved.

\pbunnies\g, \plidka\g, \pacorn\g methuselahs with 17332, 29055, 5206 generations  lifespan.

\pbig glider\g The big glider was found by Dean Hickerson in December 1989  and  was
        the first known  diagonal spaceship other than the glider. 

\pbi-gun\g  a double-barreled glider gun, a glider generator.  It produces two  gli-
        ders for 46 generations.

\pblock-laying switch engine\g  a puffer train which travels diagonally at c/12  to-
        wards the  upper left with a period of 96.  This is the  smallest  known
        object which grows without bound. It produces eight new blocks every 288
        generations.

\bEXPLORATION

\g Here are some 2-state rules to experiment with:

  \p23/3\g        the default, of course; Conway's "Life" rules.

  \p1234/3\g      patterns "crystallize"

  \p12345/45\g    patterns become contained

  \p12345/4\g     same as above, but settles VERY quickly

  \p5/12\g        floor  tile patterns...  Variations of this tend to be interesting
              as well

  \p1357/1357\g   replicators world...

  \p/2\g          seeds - most patterns expand indefinitely, some interesting  ones.
              Fast gliders.

  \p012345678/3\g life without  death.  Ladders.

\bFILES

  \pcolors.cfg\g   this file contains palette.  It's binary file.  Maybe omitted.

  \pcr.txt\g       the text file with copyright and historical  information.  Should
              not be omitted!

\bAUTHORS

\g  Jon Bennett,
  Chuck Silvers,
  Paul Callahan,
  Eric S. Raymond,
  Achim Flammenkamp,
  Vladimir Lidovski,
  Yaroslav Zotov

\bSEE ALSO

  \phttp://www.conwaylife.com\b
  \phttp://freecode.com/projects/xlife\b

