The Sinclair QL Forum

Does anyone know anything about Cellular automata (c) 1992 Richard Kettlewell

I have just found this on a disk including the C sources - is it a Quanta program? I could not see it on Dilwyn's website.

The copy on my disk might not work - on q-emulator it draws a purple border around a black screen - there is a small white dot you can move with the cursor keys - you press enter, the dot disappears and that's it !!

"Cellular Automata" is a nice scientific expression for the theory behind "Conway's Game of Life"

I would expect you move the cursor around to place cells/dots (maybe using the space bar) and start the simulation using ENTER.

If you only place one single dot, live is going to be over after the first generation.

Tobias

I'm the author. I can remember nothing about this program. Send me a copy?

Hi Richard, nice to have you on the forum!

Hi!
Rich has sent me a copy, plus some hints which might yet help extract more of my 1990s-era work (for whatever that's worth... l-)

Hi ! this is mine... Click !

May the FORTH be with you ! Paul

Rich, my guess would be try also the space bar :

My logic interface for populating the world before starting the game would involve the space bar to freeze the cell and after that the arrow keys would move another square until you freeze it with the space bar... and so on. Then after populating the world with several cells, hitting the ENTER key, you would start the simulation, which is what apparently you did : with only one cell in the world, it will die immediately.

I have to apologize (shame on me !) Tofro, I id not read completely your post before.

Rich, did you try this ? does it work ?

Based on the source the keyboard controls seem to be:
- arrow keys to move around; hold CTRL to go faster
- 'r' to randomize everything
- 'c' to clear everything
- 0-7 to select states
- escape to quit
- enter to start running the automaton

If the code had been compiled for one of the 2-state automata then it would be space to toggle the state. I had to disassemble the supplied executable to check l-)

While running:
- escape to quit
- CTRL-F2 to force redraw
- any other key to pause; any key resumes

Source code now up at https://github.com/ewxrjk/qlbits licensed under GPL3.

Great - I will add it to the Sinclair QL GitHub too

Did you manage to find any other software?

Nothing of any interest, I'm afraid.
Is the old Quanta library around somewhere? There's probably some stuff of mine in there.