Game of Life

Task: Simulate the growth of a biological population. The Game of Life, invented by John H. Conway, is supposed to model the genetic laws for birth, survival, and death. Our implementation of the game will use a 2-dimensional array with 12 rows and 12 columns. Each cell of the array will hold either a 1 (an organism is present) or a 0 (no organism there). You will calculate 4 generations of the organisms birth, survival, and death.

An organisms neighbors affect its survival. Each organism has 8 adjoining cells where its neighbors may live, as shown in this grid:

	0	0	1
	1	X	0
	0	1	0

The neighbors for cell X would be located in the 8 shaded cells surrounding it. In the situation illustrated, X has 3 neighbors.

Rules for the game:

Birth: An organism will be born in each empty location that has exactly 3 neighbors.

Death: An organism with 4 or more organisms as neighbors will die from overcrowding. An organism with 1 or 0 neighbors will die of loneliness.

Survival: An organism with 2 or 3 neighbors will survive to the next generation.

You will not have to process the border cells (i.e., rows 0 and 11, and columns 0 and 11)

of the game, but the border cells contents will affect the internal cells. Assume that border cells are infertile regions where organisms can neither survive nor be born.

The population configuration as shown below will be the initial contents of one array. For each generation, calculate the results of the first arrays births, deaths, and survivals, and store those results in a second array. After printing the results, copy the second arrays data back into the first one (replacing the original data), and repeat the process to calculate the next generation.

Input: The first array will be initialized as follows:

int life[12][12] =

{ {0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0},

{0,0,0,0,1,0,1,0,1,0,0,0},

{0,0,0,1,0,1,0,1,0,0,0,0},

{0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0},

{0,0,0,0,1,0,1,0,1,0,0,0},

{0,0,0,1,0,1,0,1,0,0,0,0},

{0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0},

{0,0,0,0,1,1,1,1,0,0,0,0},

{0,0,0,0,1,0,1,0,1,0,0,0},

{0,0,0,1,0,1,0,1,0,0,0,0},

{0,0,0,0,1,0,1,0,1,0,0,0},

{0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0} };

Output: You will print out the initial situation and the results of each of 4 generations of growth. Send all the print output to a single external file. Provide header information (including name and date) in your printed version, and include row numbers and column numbers. Line up the columns. The initial generation would look something like this:

Game of Life

---------------

Original Configuration:

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 0

2 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0

3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

4 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 0

5 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0

6 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0

7 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0

8 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 0

9 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0

10 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 0

11 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0