Author:

• Name: J. David Lowe
  Location: US - United States of America (United States)

To build:

    make

NOTE: this entry requires the X11/Xlib.h header file and the X11 library to compile. For more information see the FAQ on “X11”.

Bugs and (Mis)features:

The current status of this entry is:

STATUS: INABIAF - please DO NOT fix

For more detailed information see 2012/dlowe in bugs.html.

To use:

    ./dlowe

Try:

    ./dlowe

Watch for a while if you like, then press a key within the window.

Use up and down keys to escape death.

Judges’ remarks:

The judges lose playing this game. This entry wins!

Q: How did we get past the variadic macro problem on a Mac?

A: Don’t use -pedantic-errors in the Makefile.

Author’s remarks:

Conway’s Game of DEATH

This is a challenging, fast-paced arcade game, based on the famous Game of Life.

Story

In the game, you are Mr.C, a lightweight spaceship making a futile dash for escape from the rigid rules and predictability of life in the B3/S23 universe.

Use the up and down arrow keys to steer: collisions are fatal for Mr.C! Learn to spot incoming gliders, skim the surfaces of beehives and blocks, and give blinkers plenty of space. Things get crazier as Mr.C picks up speed… can he escape?

No. There is no winning. Sadly for Mr.C, this universe goes on forever. Just see how far you can make it!

Press q any time to quit.

Features

• casual gameplay
• infinite, procedurally generated universe
• progressive difficulty
• animated splash screens

Limitations

• Flicker, especially at high speeds, and in spite of “double-buffering” (X11 doesn’t make it possible to lock drawing to the display refresh rate.)
• Cannot be run outside of the directory containing the data files (splash.d, dead.d and sprites.d).
• Cannot build or run without X11 (or an X11 compatibility layer).

Wish List

• Score keeping
• Color
• In-game instructions
• Sound

Hosts Tested

• Darwin 10.8.0 i386 (clang 1.6 and gcc 4.2.1)
• Linux 2.6.32 i686 (clang 1.1 and gcc 4.4.3)
• Linux 3.2.0 x86_64 (clang 3.0 and gcc 4.6.3)

Obfuscations

The code is formatted into a 14-cell shape which will evolve into a glider in 19 generations.

Lots of globals, including a global struct whose members have the same names as global variables.

Global variables getting reused in different contexts.

Huge and convoluted expressions, abusing ternary operators and operator precedence.

Lots of magic numbers, abuse of the relationships between magic numbers, and abuse of the arithmetic properties of magic numbers.

Primary files

• dlowe.c - entry source code
• Makefile - entry Makefile
• dlowe.orig.c - original source code

Secondary files

• 2012_dlowe.tar.bz2 - download entry tarball
• README.md - markdown source for this web page
• dead.d - game data input file
• .entry.json - entry summary and manifest in JSON
• .gitignore - list of files that should not be committed under git
• .path - directory path from top level directory
• splash.d - game data input file
• sprites.d - game data input file
• index.html - this web page

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