"Life"

Here's my program to play "Life" -- Warning! Playing with this game can be addictive! LifeDist.zip
The program, Life3.exe, runs in DOS
Text files found in the archive are:
Life3.hlp (that the program reads), Life intoduction document.txt, LIF files description.txt and Readme.txt

To get the maximum field in the memory model that I used (I used the "Tiny" memory model as I was just learning Borland C which is what this program was written in) press s for scale and change it to 1 or 2. Then press w for world size and change it to 150 for a field 150 on a side (bigger than 150 will crash the program, as Life3.hlp, the help screen, says). Put the "R-Pentomino" in the middle and watch it rip! It takes exactly 1104 generations to stabilize that little baby (counting the original shape as generation 1).

An interesting book I read about "Life" is "The Recursive Universe" by William Poundstone, which alternates chapters on the "Life" program with discussions about complexity and the limits of scientific knowledge. (William Poundstone also wrote some other interesting books, such as "Big Secrets", which was fascinating. A check in Amazon for later work by him is also rewarding.)