Read Me for Golly

Welcome to Golly, a sophisticated tool for exploring Conway's Game of Life and many other types of cellular automata.

Key features:

- Free, open source and cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux).
- Supports both bounded and unbounded universes.
- Supports various topologies (plane, torus, Klein bottle, etc.).
- Supports multi-state universes (cells can have up to 256 states).
- Includes QuickLife, a fast, memory-efficient algorithm.
- Use the HashLife algorithm to see large patterns evolve at huge time scales.
- Supports many different rules, including Wolfram's 1D rules, WireWorld, Generations, Larger than Life, and John von Neumann's 29-state CA.
- Use the RuleLoader algorithm to load your own rules.
- Responsive even while generating or garbage collecting.
- Reads RLE, macrocell, Life 1.05/1.06, dblife, and MCell files.
- Can also read common graphic formats: BMP, PNG, GIF, TIFF.
- Can extract patterns, scripts and rules from zip files.
- Download files from online archives.
- Includes a state-of-the-art pattern collection.
- Fast loading of large patterns.
- Paste in patterns from the clipboard.
- Unlimited undo/redo.
- Unbounded zooming out for astronomical patterns.
- Auto fit option keeps a generating pattern within view.
- Full screen option (no menu/status/tool/scroll bars).
- Supports multiple layers, including cloned layers.
- HTML-based help with an integrated Life Lexicon.
- Scriptable via Lua or Python.
- User-configurable keyboard shortcuts.

The Golly application can be installed anywhere you like, but make sure you move the whole folder because the various subfolders must be kept with the application.

We also provide bgolly, a GUI-less version of Golly that can be run from the command line.

The latest information is available at the Golly web site:

  http://golly.sourceforge.net/

Now go forth and generate!

Andrew Trevorrow (andrew@trevorrow.com)
Tom Rokicki (rokicki@gmail.com)
(on behalf of The Golly Gang)