Life 1.0b3
Copyright 1996 Eric Kidd <eric.kidd@pobox.com>

http://www.pobox.com/~emk/sw/be/
ftp://www.dartmouth.edu/people/emk/ftp/be/

SYNOPSIS

Now much faster, and in color!

Two programs are included with this archive. "Life" is a screen saver
module for Hiroshi Lockheimer's "saver" application. LivingAlone is a
standalone application which displays the same animation using the
GameKit.

Both programs implement the "game of life." The rules are simple:

	1) The screen is divided into a grid of squares
	2) Squares may be alive (colored) or dead (black).
	3) Each square has eight surrounding squares.
	4) Squares with more than three live neighbors die of overpopulation.
	5) Squares with fewer than two live neighbors die of loneliness.
	6) Dead squares with exactly three neighbors come to life.
	
	...and three special rules, free of charge...
	
	7) Offscreen squares are always dead.
	8) Repeating patterns of length 17 or less are restarted.
	9) Color changes with the age of squares
	
Rule (8) ensures that the screen saver, does, in fact, save your screen,
and prevents the standalone version from becoming very boring.

The screen saver version tries to conserve processor power by running at
B_LOW_PRIORITY. It should run very slowly if a more important program is
running, but use all available cycles if no other program needs the CPU.

To quit LivingAlone, hit Command-Q.

REQUIREMENTS

BeOS DR8
saver (available from <http://www.twics.com/~hiropee/saver.html>)

VERSION HISTORY

	1.0b3	Added Game Kit version
			Rewrote saver module to use Hiroshi's CSaveThread class
			No more sample animation in config view
			Fixed screen-freeze bug first seen in 1.0b2
    1.0b2   (unreleased)
			Square sizes must be multiple of 4 for speed
			Modularized animation code
			Faster (no longer snoozes between frames)
			Color
	1.0b1	UPDATED FOR BeOS DR8
			Updated for new saver API
			Uses DrawBitmapAsync
			Compatible with Random
	1.0b0	Initial release

SOURCES

Source code is included with the package. You'll also need my libraries,
which are generally available from my web site and FTP directories. Feel
free to carve up this screen saver to write your own, but beware of
any section of the code marked with "XXX".

BUGS

I've rewritten most of the program, eliminating many of the older bugs.
A few remain:

	* No real error recovery.
	* No preferences.
	* Sometimes Command-Q is sent to the wrong application (BeOS bug)
	* Probably many others.