LIFE14: 2D Game of Life on an MK14

[Realtime]

I was very impressed with the LIFE game that Phil_G created for the PICL/NIBL module, demonstrated here. So I decided to see if I could port it to the MK14 and here is the result: LIFE14.

LIFE14 is an adaptation of Phil_G's March 2023 version (running under Kitbug+ on the PICLv2) of John Conway's original Game of Life program. It uses a 16x30 grid to fit within the MK14's 1.5K expansion RAM. I've added 3 extras to the game:
1) A life-cycle counter, displayed at the bottom of the screen. This lets you see how many life cycles occurred before the cells reached a steady state
2) Pressing the 'GO' key initialises the Life cell matrix with random values and then restarts the game
3) Pressing the '1' key changes the 'background' character from a dot to a space

Keys are scanned once every cycle, so about every 1/2 second. The game requires a VDU module operating in character mode with the top half at address 0x200 and the bottom at 0x300. SRAM is needed from 0x200-0x7FF, 0xB00-0xBFF and 0xF00-0xFFF.

The attached zip file includes:
LIFE14.asm - SBASM coded assembler
LIFE14.hex - Intel hex format for hex loaders. This includes the auto-execution address (0xB02)
LIFE14.lst - Assembled listing file

I've written LIFE14 to make full use of Coolsnaz2's fast hex loader and takes about 8 seconds to load. As part of the load process the display is initialised with a LIFE splash screen. If you are using a relatively slow hex loader you can comment that out to speed up the load (see line 32 of the .asm file). Likewise, there is a buffer (GEN2) that gets initialised to zeros. Strictly speaking this in't needed so again it can be commented out (see line 106 of the .asm file).

The default cell array for the game has been set-up to confirm that life can be beautiful , but there are 2 'walker' shapes that manage to disrupt things

Photo's attached. I'll post a YouTube video of it in action.

Enjoy!

[TonyDuell]

Originally Posted by Realtime

The default cell array for the game has been set-up to confirm that life can be beautiful , but there are 2 'walker' shapes that manage to disrupt things

Gliders?

[Timbucus]

Oh beat me too it - I always intended to do a version of this for the VDU. For those without there is a 1D Life that runs on the segment display of an unexpanded RAM MK14 that appeared in the Computing Today Oct 1979 edition by Paul Glover - the flowchart it is around is for the program over the page so don't get confused!

I have posted before I think but, just in case here is the ZIP again

[Realtime]

Originally Posted by TonyDuell

Gliders?

Indeed, yes. Was listening to Johnny Walker's Sounds of the 70's when I wrote the message

[Phil__G]

Luvvit

[Realtime]

Here's an update to LIFE14. Coolsnaz2 suggested a few changes including a demo mode. v2 has the following improvements:

-- Demo mode added. Press 'D' at any time to enter demo mode. The life cycle counter will reach 99 and then restart the game with a random pattern. Press 'D' again to exit at any point
-- The background character selection is remembered when a new game starts
-- The random pattern is less dense so results in more interesting patterns.

Have fun!
Ian