Reviews for Conway's Game of Life

[hobbes312]

Strange

Very odd, I actually like the strange spin on this. It acts sort of like a procedurally generated picture or stretching further, movie. Are all the patterns completely randomized, as when I hit 'random'? I ask because I keep seeing quite accurate representations of trains, boats, e.t.c., but I have a feeling that that is the POINT of the game. Overall I think it needs to be polished just a little bit, we're sort of thrown to a blank screen with no instructions, but I really like the idea. I'd give it a high 8, but that rounds to 9, so there you go.

AdamYoung27 responds:

Yes. It is all random. The random button simply fills in random cells and then you can watch what comes up on the screen. Even I don't know what will happen in all possible ways. I just programmed the basic rules of the game into this SWF. It took a lot of times playing the Java applet on www.math.com to be able to get this game completely right.

[Paukl]

Very nice!

This is a classic! Used in many philosophical examples of self-organisation and philosophy of mind! It would be nice if you could add some of the basic structures that are known, like gliders. And if you could change how large the grid is, now it is quite small.

9/10 5/5

[skull-x1]

wut

this may be a really good conecpt, but it was hard to use confusing and boring. maybe a tutorial or instruction?

[Hirumaru]

Fix It.

Stop button doesn't work. You need to fix that. >.>

[Siriagus]

Needs improvment...

"Conway's Game of Life" is a great "game" and there are many good versions of it on the internet. Unfortunately, this is not one of them. After loading the movie, you meet what seems to be an empty screen, except for some buttons at the top. You should have made the grid visible from the start.
The biggest bug (or is it just me?) is that the stop button doesn't seem to work. If you had fixed this problem you would got a much better rating. I also suggest you attach a generation counter. A next button would also be nice, so that we could see how "life" envolves step for step if we want to.
Take a look at this java version: http://www.bitstorm.org/gameoflife/
You see how much better it is? Look at it, learn from it and try to improve your flash version.

The reason I give you such a low score is mainly because of the stop button doesn't work, which is really frustrating. This is a major bug. If other people, including yourself, get it working, it's still a bug, because it should work under any circumstances and it should work as the user (me) expects. That is very important when launching any kind of interactive application. The interface should be intuitive, meaning that the user don't need heavy instructions to get it to work.

My intention with this review is to be helpful and I hope you see it that way to.
I mention it again, fix the stop button.
Good luck, I know it can be hard, but given enough time and work, you'll make it! :D