Program Due: Friday December 9, 11:59 PM.

Description

In this project, you'll write a program in C to play the Game of Life.

The Game of Life is an example of what's called a "cellular automata." It's not a game in the traditional sense: there aren't winners and losers. Instead, it's more of a simulation of life and evolution on a simple landscape.

The rules are simple: We start out with a grid of squares, some of which are 'alive' and some of which are 'dead'. Each iteration, some live squares die, and some dead squares are reborn, according to the following rules:

• If you are alive and have 0 or 1 live neighbor, you die of boredom.
• If you are alive and have more than three live neighbors, you die from overcrowding.
• If you are alive and have 2 or 3 live neighbors, you stay alive.
• If you are dead and have exactly 3 live neighbors, you come alive.

What's interesting about the Game of Life is that these four simple rules produce some amazing patterns. For some examples, check out the following links:

• math.com
• Life Patterns

We'll be building the Game of Life in C. Lectures in class over the next week will cover the different components you'll need to build the game, including multidimensional arrays, working with files, and drawing to the screen with curses.

Your program must have the following features:

• A header file called Board.h. Board.h should contain:
  • a definition for the Board struct. The Board struct should contain ints representing the numbers of rows and columns, and a pointer to a two-dimensional array of ints.
  • The following function prototypes:
    • void createRandomBoard(board *b, int rows, int cols);
    • void updateBoard(board *b);
    • int getAliveNeighbors(board *b, int row, int col);
    • void readBoardFromFile(board *b, FILE *f, int rows, int cols);
    • int isValidCell(board *b, int i,int j);
    • void drawBoard(board *b);
    • printBoard(board *b);
• A source file called Board.c - Board.c should implement each of the functions defined in Board.h. Here's some more detail on what they should do:
  • createRandomBoard - the user should be able to pass in a reference to a Board struct. This function should allocate a 2D array of integers ifor the board and fill each cell in with a random value (either 0 or 1).
  • void updateBoard(board *b) - this should apply the Game of Life rules to the current board.
  • int getAliveNeighbors(board *b, int row, int col) - this is a helper function that, for a given x,y location, tells how many neighbors are alive.
  • void readBoardFromFile(board *b, FILE *f, int rows, int cols). This is a function that, given a board reference and a file pointer, allocates a 2D array for the board and fills in the contents from a file. (this is nice for loading in specific starting patterns).
  • int isValidCell(board *b, int i,int j). This should return 1 if x and y are both between 0 and nrows (ncols), or 0 otherwise.
  • void drawBoard(board *b) - this should use curses to draw the board to the screen.
  • printBoard(board *b) - this should use printf() to print the board to the screen.