Conway's Game of Life

A high-performance implementation of the Game of Life using C++ and Raylib.

Instead of drawing thousands of rectangles (which is slow), this project writes cell data directly to a texture and uses a custom fragment shader to render the grid lines and cell shapes. This keeps the framerate silky smooth even at high resolutions.

It also features a Prediction Mode—a "ghost" overlay that shows you exactly what the next generation will look like while you are still editing.

How to Build

Linux

git clone https://github.com/DarshPareek/game_of_life.git
cd game_of_life/build
./premake5 gmake
cd ..
cmake .
make
./GameOfLife

Controls

General

Key	Action
Space	Toggle between Edit and Run mode
Scroll	Zoom In / Out
Shift + Drag	Pan Camera
S	Toggle Bloom Shader
Q	Quit

Edit Mode

Key	Action
Left Click	Draw Cells
Right Click	Erase Cells
Enter	Spawn Random Cells
R	Clear Grid
T	Toggle Prediction Overlay (See the future!)

Run Mode

Key	Action
Up Arrow	Increase Speed
Down Arrow	Decrease Speed

Shader Tweaking

You can tweak the visual look in real-time:

• G + Up/Down: Adjust grid gap thickness.
• R + Up/Down: Adjust cell radius.
• B + S + Up/Down: Bloom samples.