Conway’s Game of Life, Pong, Screensavers, and Me…

Greetings, all:

Due to the massive increase in my blog traffic (I think I het around 20 / week or so) after I initially offered up my Game of Life screensaver, I now offer, in celebration of the new year, GoLPong!

That’s right, for 2009 you now can have a fancy new Game of Life screensaver.  BUT THIS ONE’S PACKED WITH NEW FEATURES!  Well, what are they?

• Game of Life does both trails and no trails
• Flickers between trails and non-trails
• Pong played live by your computer against itself
• Alternates randomly between these two!

Oh my god, you say, but how much does it cost?

Free.  Because I love you.

It is a beautifully dumb screensaver.  You can get it here.  The source code (uncommented, of course) is here.

Tell me how you like it.  Also, send me comments for the 2010 version you’d like to see.

~ZagNut

Mazes, SDL, Smoking, and Me...

So, first and foremost, I will (hopefully) be posting daily for the next month.  I've decided to quit smoking.  I feel like ass all the time and have a 4-month old son for whom I've promised to quit.  I will, starting tomorrow, be using the patch, eating excessively, and curling up into a fetal position.  I will also, as a reminder to myself and a small benefit to mankind, provide an entry each day recounting my pain and suffering.  I've "quit" twice before for 2+ years.  If I can make it 30 days, I should be golden.

I have also been playing around with SDL the last week or so, and have re-written my MazeRunner screensaver to use SDL.  Based on my recent OCD on (GDI-based) screensavers, some initial Pros and Cons:

Pros:

• WAY WAY easy to use; much more so than DirectX or OpenGL
• Fast and effective

Cons:

• Screensaver display settings "preview" seems next to impossible
• SDL_Timer + SDL_Events for rendering = bad idea.  I had the timer send an event message for when to re-render the screen.  Quitting the saver would throw an error big time.  Seems that the saver was "in the process of rendering" when SDL_Quit was called and the saver was trying to free the surfaces.

I've also been having one hell of a time trying to figure out how to remove the "chunkiness" of the animation.  It's not flicker, but rather looks like a screen sync issue.

Although I'm not near to being fully pleased with the final product, and haven't taken the time to clean up my code, I've decided to throw the source (Visual Studio 2005) out here.  The screensaver and necessary dlls are here in a zip file.  I've also decided to throw the Yagol++ screensaver and GDI-based MazeRunner source out in zips.  They are here and here, respectively.

If anyone out there can take a look at the SDL MazeRunner code and provide any tips, changes, etc., I'd be thrilled.  I'd really like to know what I might be able to do to improve the "smoothness" of the animation.  I've only tried it out so far on my laptop here at home, so that may be a major reason, but I'd like it to look good on any system.

Screensavers, Mazes, and Me...

Ok, I'm on a major OCD track with screensavers.  I've written a stupid Maze Runner one, which you can download here.

I need to update this and the Yagol one for the Preview dialogs, plus potentially add some settings.  Currently, the preview for the Maze Runner looks like this:

Which doesn't really show the guy running through the maze.  Not sure when I'll get to this as I'm now focused on my next masterpiece!

I'll also throw the sourcecode up for Yagol and this soon, even though I get no love from my (limited) audience.

~simon

Conway's Game of Life REDUX!, Screensavers, and Me...

NOTE as of 06.23.08
The source is now available through this page

I've become obsessed with this stupid Game of Life shite. All my other projects are on hold until I get this out of my system.

So far, I've gotten out a simple, plug-in based .NET version: Yagol.NET.

Now, for your pleasure, it's: The Yagol++ Screensaver!

I added "traces" of where a cell used to be live up to five generations earlier.

The saver can be downloaded here. Now, here's the catch: if you want a link to the source, I'll post it as a comment reply after I've received some comments from you all requesting it. I NEED ATTENTION!

Thanx!

~simon

I'm so exciting...

Always looking for interesting things to do, I downloaded the Electric Sheep screensaver a while back and it came in big tonight.

My wife and I just finished watching the "brilliant" week 16 Steelers game and were bored.  I had the laptop on, trying to figure out who the actors were (besides Montana) in the Joe's Diner commercials, and took a long enough break for the screensaver to kick in.  Joey went in, fired up the iPod in the Griffin system with some Pick Floyd, and turned out the lights.  Kept us busy for a good 30 minutes.

How Dark Side of the Moon stays synced to pretty much everything in the universe when you play it is both a little creepy and awe inspiring.

Anyway, check out that Electric Sheep screensaver and turn on the Floyd.

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