June 20, 1995

The Game of Life was invented by English mathematician John Conroy, using  
a Go board and markers.  It is supposed to mimic organisms forms evolving.

It is a very simple game, in this version the screen is divided into a grid
of 35 X 64 cells.  Some of of the cells are initially lit (cells to be 
colored are either chosen randomly by the computer or the user can toggle 
cells on or off using a mouse).  Whether or not the cell remains on or are 
erased is determined by how many of its neighbors are lit.  If a cell 
has 2 or 3 active neighbors, it stays lit.  A blank cell is turned on
if it has 3 lit neighbors.  In other words a cell is either lit or remains 
lit if it is neither too crowded nor too lonely.

Many versions of Life have been written, mostly in C or Assembler.  My main
purpose in writing this in QBasic is to see if todays ultra-fast processors
make such a calculation intense program feasible in Basic.  Unfortunately it
takes almost 4 seconds for a new generation of cells to be produced on my 386.

If anyone with a 486 or Pentium would care to time how long it takes on their 
machine, I would appreciate e-mail with the results.                   JimCG1

