ASCII Game of Life

Wed, 16 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Motivation

Motivated by being able to render almost anything in a terminal by my prior work with ASCII Surfaces I was thinking about other simple stuff that could use this.

One of the first ideas was implementing Conway’s Game of Life, which I had never implemented and find very interesting.

In short the Conway’s Game of Life happens in a two dimensional grid whose cells are either alive or dead. Depending on a given configuration of this grid one can apply these rules to get another configuration (generation):

ASCII Surfaces

Sat, 05 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Motivation

Somehow I stumbled over this C code generating a rotating torus inside a terminal. Might have been Lex Fridman’s video on it.

 k;double sin()
,cos();main(){float A=
0,B=0,i,j,z[1760];char b[
1760];printf("\x1b[2J");for(;;
){memset(b,32,1760);memset(z,0,7040)
;for(j=0;6.28>j;j+=0.07)for(i=0;6.28
>i;i+=0.02){float c=sin(i),d=cos(j),e=
sin(A),f=sin(j),g=cos(A),h=d+2,D=1/(c*
h*e+f*g+5),l=cos (i),m=cos(B),n=s\
in(B),t=c*h*g-f* e;int x=40+30*D*
(l*h*m-t*n),y= 12+15*D*(l*h*n
+t*m),o=x+80*y, N=8*((f*e-c*d*g
)*m-c*d*e-f*g-l *d*n);if(22>y&&
y>0&&x>0&&80>x&&D>z[o]){z[o]=D;;;b[o]=
".,-~:;=!*#$@"[N>0?N:0];}}/*#****!!-*/
printf("\x1b[H");for(k=0;1761>k;k++)
putchar(k%80?b[k]:10);A+=0.04;B+=
0.02;}}/*****####*******!!=;:~
~::==!!!**********!!!==::-
.,~~;;;========;;;:~-.
..,--------,*/

I really like terminal applications and manifolds so I thought it might be cool to see other surfaces in this manner. I’m quiet fond of the Möbius strip as a simple non-orientable surface.

Blogs on Wolph

ASCII Game of Life

Motivation

ASCII Surfaces

Motivation