GAME OF LIFE IN JAVASCRIPT FOR NODE.JS

How to run:

git clone https://bitbucket.org/thekarel/game-of-life-for-node.git
cd game-of-life-for-node
node index.js seed/golly.txt

You can configure the speed of the animation and the size of the random seed in index.js.

For rules and background, see the LifeWiki, which contains a lot of patterns in plain text which you can feed to this app (e.g. Acorn).

Logo for the repo is from DevinatArt

Short GoL Summary:

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, live or dead. Every cell interacts with its eight neighbours, which are the cells that are directly 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 needs caused by underpopulation.
Any live cell with more than three live neighbours dies, as if by overcrowding.
Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives, unchanged, to the next generation.
Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours cells will come to life.