by Eric Slick email [email protected] Feb 8, 2013 Time Spent: 10-12 hours (guesstimate)
Run game_window.rb
- It will seed up to 10 colonies with a random number of life forms
- Esc will close the game
- Enter/Return will reset the simulation
Thoughts on Implementation of Rules
- births and deaths are calculated before they are actually added or removed from the list of cells/lifeforms to simulate a full generation passage (the birth of a child should not affect the current cells/lifeforms in the current generation
- births are calculated before deaths to simulate the effects of current cells/lifeforms before they potentially die
Getting Up and Running
- Written using Ruby 1.9.3
- IDE used: RubyMine 5.0
- bundle install from project directory (or rubymine/tools/bundler/install)
- from terminal or command window
- ruby game_window.rb
- from RubyMine
- right click file and select run
Tests / TDD
- TDD approach was used (except for game_window.rb) for this project using Rspec
- Rspec tests are provided for the backend but not the front end (game_window.rb)
- Run Tests from command line...
- rspec spec
- Run Tests From RubyMine
- right click on spec folder and choose Run/All specs in: spec
IDE
- Written using RubyMine 5.0 and included in zip is the .idea project files
- Unzip contents (will create project folder)
- Run RubyMine and then open this project folder
Uses Gosu for displaying the life forms in a window
Issues and Thoughts
- Optimization Ideas
- Will get slow with a lot of birthing (constructing new cells).
- Don't delete cells, but re-use
- It appears GC is slowing things way down when it kicks in...above should mostly fix
- Algorithm to find neighbors is brute force
- should be able to eliminate overlapping checks
- Currently uses array and hash map...explore custom collection type/s
- Will get slow with a lot of birthing (constructing new cells).
- Needs proper inputs (buttons and inputs to aid user exploration