For this lab, implement the four rules for Conway's Game of Life, as outlined below.
We have given you a working build system, a skeleton of the function to implement, and a sample test to show you how to get started.
Our hope is that when you have completed this lab, you will have the following:
- You are comfortable test driving code in C.
- You are familiar with building software using the CMake build system.
- You feel like you have enough knowledge of C to work on a simple embedded project.
If you complete these rules, an interesting experiment would be to tackle the board, and find a way to display the board.
The universe of the Game of Life is an infinite, two-dimensional orthogonal grid of square cells, each of which is in one of two possible states, alive or dead, (or populated and unpopulated, respectively). Every cell interacts with its eight neighbours, which are the cells that are horizontally, vertically, or diagonally adjacent. At each step in time, the following transitions occur:
- Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies, as if by underpopulation.
- Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives on to the next generation.
- Any live cell with more than three live neighbours dies, as if by overpopulation.
- Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours becomes a live cell, as if by reproduction.
The initial pattern constitutes the seed of the system. The first generation is created by applying the above rules simultaneously to every cell in the seed; births and deaths occur simultaneously, and the discrete moment at which this happens is sometimes called a tick. Each generation is a pure function of the preceding one. The rules continue to be applied repeatedly to create further generations.
The first time you build, do the following:
~/workspace/life $ mkdir build
~/workspace/life $ cd build
~/workspace/life/build $ cmake ..
This should generate a long string of text.
~/workspace/life/build $ make && test/game-of-life-test
This should generate a very nice looking build message, and provided that your build was successful, run your tests.
If you add new files
cmake ..
This will link the new source files to our generated make files
For our example we are using the Unity testing suite. Their documentation is excellent, and we strongly encourage you to read it.
If you need to update the test suite you can run the source-library.sh in the test folder. It will download the latest version of the test suite for you and install it to the test folder.
When working in C it's important to follow the Red, Green, Refactor cycle very strictly. C testing tools don't automatically discover tests, so you need to see your test fail, for the expected reasons, before you start trying to make it pass. It is really easy to forget to add your test to the runner after you have added it to the C file.
If you enjoyed this lab, try our more advanced lab, esp32 Phone Booth.