conway

Grid based simulation in rust

This is an attempt to

• Implement an understood and pre-existing program in idiomatic rust style
• Provide neighbor-determination and state change conditions as abstractions through closures
• Experiment with animation techniques

The hope is to get more familiar with rust while creating a modular grid-based simulation and visualization engine. The engine happens to default to Conway's Game of Life.

Installation/Compilation notes

Install rust:
https://www.rust-lang.org/en-US/install.html

Download conway's source code:
git clone https://github.com/JeremyCooper/conway
cd conway

Build and install conway:
cargo install --features="binaries"

If all went a compiled binary should have been placed in ~/.cargo/bin.
It is recommended to add that directory to your $PATH variable.

Manual

Controls:

space: pause/play
n: step forward
q: quit

Command-Line options:

-i, --initial-state: Initial grid state.
Possible values:
Random (default)
LWSS
Glider
Eureka
Pulsar

-a, --input-cells: Cells to consider adjacent to cell currently being evaluated.
Possible values:
Neighbors (default)
NoCorners
CornersOnly
FarOnly
FarAlso
FarCornersOnly

-r, --ruleset: Ruleset to use to determine cell state changes.
Possible values:
Conway (default)
ConwayEasy
ConwayVeryEasy
Decay

-t, --delay: Delay between frames, in milliseconds

-w, --width: Width of grid, in cells

-h, --height: Height of grid, in cells

-l, --live-char: Character for displaying live cells

-d, --dead-char: Character for displaying dead cells

-c, --color: Color for live cells

-b, --dead-color: Color for dead cells

-f, --filled: In place of characters, fill entire cell for display

-p, --padding-off: Do not pad cells

-v, --inverse: Reverse live and dead cell options for display

-z, --time-slice: Cells drift upwards

Examles:

$ conway-cli -l 'r' -d 'j' -b Red -c Blue

$ conway-cli -t 25 -c Cyan -b Red -l 'O' -d '|' -r Decay

$ conway-cli -t 25 -c Green -a NoCorners -f -r ConwayVeryEasy