Scotty Hoag
Programmer Portfolio
 
scotty.hoag@gmail.com  (209)-298-2622
NES Mug


Conway's LIVE Wallpaper
September 2011 - The Blitz - for Android
 

    One of my old college friends asked if I wanted to write a live wallpaper app for the Android OS "for fun". Of course the first thing that came to mind was to use Conway's Game of Life to generate beautiful patterns! While close inspection showed that the Android App Store had about a dozen Conway live wallpaper apps already, they were all rather bland to look at. So, I wrote what I consider to be the prettiest of them all by far. ^_^ Dragging your finger accross the home screen of your phone leaves a trail of "living" cells that move, grow, and interact with each other. You can also change their shape, color patterns, and the ruleset that governs how they propagate, as well as the speed of the simulation.

    For those unfamiliar with it, Conway's Game of Life is an artificial life simulation. Each single-celled critter lives or dies based on a custom set of rules. Each rule models a behaviour, like two neighboring cells giving birth to a new cell, or a cell surrounded by too many others dieing from overcrowding. The simulation rules can create beautiful patterns, and tweaking the rules - Which the premium version allows you to do! - can cause even more elaborate patterns to emerge.

Note: Since the app is no longer available on Google Play, I have made the Premium version free to download here. The Free Trial version with fewer features is also here for archival purposes.

Get Conway's Game of Life LIVE Wallpaper
Free Trial Version - Premium Version

1  1  1