MINISTRY OF EDUCATION, CULTURE AND RESEARCH OF REPUBLIC OF MOLDOVA
TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF MOLDOVA
FACULTY OF COMPUTERS, INFORMATICS AND MICROELECTRONICS
DEPARTMENT OF SOFTWARE ENGINEERING AND AUTOMATICS
Multimedia Technologies
Laboratory 2: Conway’s Game of Life
Mentor: Superior Lecturer: Astafi Valentina
Students: Amza Vladislav, FAF-233
Iacovlev Maxim, FAF-233
Petcov Nicolai, FAF-233
Racovita Dumitru, FAF-233
Titerez Vladislav, FAF-233
Chisinau 2025
Introduction
Conway’s Game of Life includes many different variations and can be changed and
complicated without limit. Except for the classic game of life, which involves the death of a
cell with too large a population around it due to lack of food and the death of a cell due to
loneliness, we also complicate it by adding new rules and zones. In order to complicate the
game of life, such components as a dead zone, zombie infestation, synopsis, a menu allowing
you to set custom settings, etc. were added. Below is the initial window of the game:
Image 1.1 - New version of Game of Life
As we can see, this version of game is more nice, than previous:
Image 2: Old version of Game of Life
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Types of cells and their behaviour
We have two main types of cells:
- usual citizens;
- zombies.
Depending on the cell type, it can perform different roles. A normal resident behaves
like a normal cell: communicates with people, avoids crowded or lonely places. However, it
can become infected with a disease and become a zombie. Zombies are much more
dangerous types of cells. They hunt normal residents and turn them into zombies infected
with the virus. They can move along their own route and chase people, the normal rules of
cell life are not important to them. They are less sensitive to the zone (more on that later) and
eventually enslave the world.
Image 3: Two types of cell (green - zombie).
Theme & Synopsis
Professor Alexei was working on an experimental model of a virus, which he
implanted into a live dog. This virus also had a GPS tracker, but suddenly there was an
emergency in the laboratory, the dog escaped from the laboratory.
That same evening the factory worker Ivan had just finished his shift, he was drinking his
routine life with his grandfather's moonshine, when suddenly a dog with vertical pupils
attacked him, Ivan thought it was nothing, at the same moment a second green dot appeared
on Alexey's screens....
In the world introduced a degree of emergency, but Alexey could only watch this
picture, as suddenly he came up with the idea to lead the affected areas, for the death of all
living things and lead recovery points, where they could cure zombies
The laboratory from which the dog escaped, became requested and sealed with the status of
"in quarantine", only light was visible from the room of experiments Alexey, it was a
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screen on which was presented a picture of the development of events "Conway's
Game of Life".
Main Menu
In order to make the game more variable, it was decided to add a menu. The
menu has many different options that allow you to change both the appearance and
its logic. You can enter the menu by pressing the "M" button. Some menu options are
also available outside of it. It is worth noting that standard settings are also provided
and help to start the simulation without delving into the rules. You can start the
simulation by pressing the "P" button. Below are its main options:
- Create new simulation;
- Increase / Decrease initial population probability;
- Increase / Decrease grid size;
- Increase / Decrease generation;
- Moving dead zone;
- Pause/Resume simulation;
- Scroll across;
- And other additional options.
Image 4: Menu in Game of Life.
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Dead Zone
According to one of the requirements, we needed to add a zone in which the
behavior of cells would begin to change. Given the general setting, it was decided
that we would have a dead zone. This exclusion zone is the place where the
explosion occurred at the nuclear power plant. It is the heart of the zombies' origin,
so they prefer to look there from time to time, but there is no food there, so they do
not linger. As for the inhabitants, sometimes they go there due to their own illiteracy,
their path ends there and they die. Thus, the dead zone is destructive for ordinary
inhabitants.
Image 5: Dead zone. a) First seconds; b) After a few seconds.
ReHub Zone
It's a zone where infected cells have a 33% chance of turning back into
normal, healthy cells.Simulating natural human development, and ways to overcome
this apocalypse.
Image 5.1: ReHub zone
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Changing Greed
To make the game more flexible and open to changes by the user, he can
always change the size or position of the cells. According to the requirements (and
even more), the ability to configure cells was added. It is worth noting that it works
both at the very beginning of the simulation and at any time. Perhaps the best way to
use it is in combination with reducing the simulation time, in which case you can
follow the change in the simulation step by step by manually pressing "P".
Image 6: Changing configuration. a) Before; b) After.
Behavior Comparison
A separate aspect covered in this report is the comparison of the behavior of
cells in the dead zone and outside it. As mentioned earlier, zombies are loyal to this
zone and do not try to stay there for a long time, they do not die there and continue
to feel great. In the case of ordinary cells, they try to escape from the zone as soon
as they notice that they are getting worse (there is a small chance of this outcome),
but they often die (disappear on the screen), another feature is that they do not
recover in this zone. With a small probability, ordinary residents can gain immunity in
the death zone. In this case, they will remain there in quarantine, but will survive (you
can imagine some kind of TV series like "Survival in Pripyat").
Rule Effect
The introduced rule radically changes the lives of both residents inside and
outside the dead zone. Now an ordinary resident is highly likely to die. He can be
killed by both the zone itself and zombies. Considering that zombies are gaining
more and more strength each time, the survival of ordinary cells becomes
impossible. This means that the introduced rule is a simulation of the apocalypse,
but a real one, and not the one that is usually shown in such films, with a happy
ending.
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Emergent Behaviors & Patterns
The introduced rule completely changes the focus of the game of life from the
usual Conway game to real-time survival. This not only changes the attitude to the
game, but also makes the game unique (as much as possible given the zombie
theme). Such a rule also introduces some potential for the game, for example, if we
assume a pandemic instead of a zombie virus, we can get an excellent pandemic
simulator, which can be useful, and not just fun.
Conclusion
Conway's Game of Life was expanded in this lab project by adding extra
complexity and physics, turning it from a straightforward cellular automaton into a
dynamic survival simulation. The addition of zombie cells, a dead zone, and a menu
that could be customized to change gameplay parameters were the main
improvements. The typical behavior of living forms was changed by the inclusion of
zombie cells, making survival more difficult. The dead zone was a crucial component
that reinforced the apocalyptic atmosphere by serving as both a starting place for
zombies and a dangerous location for regular residents. By providing choices to
change the grid, tweak population probabilities, and dynamically adapt the
simulation, the menu system significantly improved user control. By adding emergent
behaviors, these changes changed the game's emphasis from traditional cellular
development to real-time survival, adding intrigue and unpredictability to the
simulation. The system may be used for purposes other than amusement, such as
studying population dynamics in harsh environments or simulating pandemics. In the
end, this experiment showed how little rule changes may significantly change a
simulation's result, making it an important investigation into system modeling and
multimedia technologies.
Link to github:
https://github.com/IacovlevMaxim/tm2
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