Game of Life Text Studio

A typed PySide6 desktop app for Conway's Game of Life, focused on generating stable text from deterministic glider syntheses.

Highlights

• Text-first workflow for stable block-text generation, including uppercase and lowercase letters.
• Determinate generation progress while the glider construction is built.
• Settle progress while the board evolves into the final text.
• Auto-sized text boards, with manual board size only shown for random and blank boards.
• Focused text/board preview modes, zoom, run/pause, stepping, and draw mode.
• Random and blank board modes for sandboxing and drawing from scratch.
• Exportable stable-text seed plans as centered x,y cells.

Requirements

• Python 3.14+ (.python-version pins the current 3.14.4 release)
• uv

Quick Start

uv python install 3.14.4
uv sync --python 3.14.4
uv run game-of-life-gui

If Python 3.14.4 is already installed, uv sync is enough.

Workflow

1. Open the app in stable-text mode.
2. Type supported ASCII text, including uppercase and lowercase letters.
3. Select Generate.
4. Watch the generation progress, then run or step the board until the settle bar completes.
5. Use Text and Board preview toggles to switch between the finished text and the full seed.

Controls

• Generate: builds a stable-text glider seed.
• Randomize: creates a random board using density and optional seed.
• Blank: creates an empty board with the chosen dimensions.
• Draw mode: left-drag adds cells, right-drag erases cells.
• Run / Pause: starts and stops evolution.
• Step: advances one generation.
• + / -: zooms the board preview.

How It Works

The text renderer turns glyph pixels into 2x2 still-life blocks. The planner places two-glider syntheses from the text center outward, choosing launch directions and delays that avoid collisions. Every generated construction is verified before it is shown in the GUI.

Development

uv run ruff check .
uv run ruff format --check .
uv run ty check
uv run pytest