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About GoL Lab

GoL Lab stands for "Game of Life Laboratory" whose purpose it to explore the famous cellular automaton Game of Life (GoL) thought by the mathematician John Conway in the late 60's. It features view controls, editing and basic simulation tools, such as stability detection and RLE file format parser. GoL Lab is a free software, licensed under the GPL and written in C++.

Version 1.0.0 Copyright (C) 2022-2023 Cyprien Lacassagne

Installation (Windows only)

  • From the installer
    • Download and run the installer.
    • Just follow the installation instructions.

Building the application

GoL Lab uses gtkmm-3.0.
Unfortunately, this library is not easy to distribute. Until I figure how to properly do it, you will have to install it on your system :

MacOS

brew install pkgconfig
brew install gtkmm3  

Debian/Ubuntu Linux

apt-get install libgtkmm-3.0-dev  

Fedora/RedHat Linux

yum install gtkmm3.0-devel  

You can then download and exctract the source code, and build GoL Lab with make from your installation directory.

Features

The current version of GoL Lab implements the following features:

Name Shortcut Description
New Ctrl + N Resets everything with a new blank simulation (closes any open file)
Open Ctrl + O Opens a .lif file defining the initial configuration of the simulation
Save Ctrl + S Saves the simulation to the current opened file
Save as Ctrl + Shift + S Renames the opened file or creates a new file, and saves the simulation
Quit Ctrl + Q Quits instantly the application without saving
Undo Ctrl + Z Cancels the last executed action
Redo Ctrl + Shift + Z Executes the last cancelled action
Cut Ctrl + X Cuts the selection in the clipboard
Copy Ctrl + C Copies the selection in the clipboard
Clear Del/Suppr Clears the selection ("kills" the selected live cells)
Paste Ctrl + V Pastes the pattern stored in the clipboard
Select all Ctrl + A Selects all the live cells
Random Fill Ctrl + R Fills 25% of the board at random
Rotate 90° R Rotates the pattern being inserted counter-clockwise by 90°
Flip vertically Y Flips vertically the pattern being inserted
Flip horizontally X Same as above but horizontally
Cursor Mode > Draw F2 Allows you to add/remove cells one by one
Cursor Mode > Drag F3, Mouse wheel click Allows you to pan the view frame
Cursor Mode > Select F4 Allows you to select a group of cells
Zoom in Ctrl + +, Mouse wheel up Zooms in by 10%
Zoom out Ctrl + -, Mouse wheel down Zooms out by 10%
Restore zoom Ctrl + 0 Restores the zoom to its default value
Show grid Ctrl + G Toggles the display of the grid
Fade effect Toggles an effect in which the cells fade when they die (decreases the fps)
Dark theme Ctrl + D Toggles light/dark theme
Color scheme Allows you to change the color scheme independantly for light/dark mode
Stability detection Ctrl + T Toggles the detection of stability : stops the simulation when it enters in a stable state
World size > Increase Ctrl + PageUp Enlarge the world by 100 cells in width and 50 cells in height
World size > Decrease Ctrl + PageDown Shrink the world by 100 cells in width and 50 cells in height
Insert pattern Ctrl + P Allows you to insert an RLE formatted pattern from the directory patterns
Help F1 Shows a help message similar to this brief documentation
About GoL Lab Shows information relative to GoL Lab, such as its version and the license

Customization (Windows and MacOS only)

Like any other GTK application, you can customize the look of GoL Lab. All you have to do is to download a theme from this website. Then extract it to the foler GoL Lab/share/themes, and specify the new theme as so :

  • Open the file etc/gtk-3.0/settings.ini
  • Edit the "gtk-theme-name" key by replacing "Adwaita" with the name of the folder you just extracted.
  • Save the file. Now the new theme should apply automatically next time you launch the application.

If you are interested in providing a native look to GoL Lab, here are some popular quality theme:

Todo

  • Provide build system and/or installers (desktop/app package) for Linux and MacOS.