Life (COMPUTE!)

An implementation of John Conway's game of life as published in COMPUTE!'s Gazette 1995/01.

Conway's Game of Life is a cellular automaton that is played on a 2D square grid. Each square (or "cell") on the grid can be either alive or dead, and they evolve according to the following rules:

Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbors dies (referred to as underpopulation).

Any live cell with more than three live neighbors dies (referred to as overpopulation).

Any live cell with two or three live neighbors lives, unchanged, to the next generation.

Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbors comes to life.

The initial configuration of cells can be created by a human, but all generations thereafter are completely determined by the above rules. The goal of the game is to find patterns that evolve in interesting ways – something that people have now been doing for over 50 years.