Conway’s Game of Life implemented in Java with two simulation strategies and two renderers (console and Jaylib/Raylib). Made to explore design choices and performance trade-offs when simulating cellular automata in Java.

The Game of Life is a zero-player cellular automaton. The universe is an infinite 2D orthogonal grid of square cells; each cell is either alive or dead. On each tick (generation) every cell transitions according to its 8 neighbors:

1. A live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies (underpopulation).
2. A live cell with two or three live neighbours lives on.
3. A live cell with more than three live neighbours dies (overpopulation).
4. A dead cell with exactly three live neighbours becomes alive (reproduction).

More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life

1. Download the executable from the latest release.
2. Run it using one of the following options:

java -jar game-of-life-1.0-release.jar

java -jar game-of-life-1.0-release.jar fast

java -jar game-of-life-1.0-release.jar console

java -jar game-of-life-1.0-release.jar console 32

java -jar game-of-life-1.0-release.jar fast console

java -jar game-of-life-1.0-release.jar console 1024

• Java Development Kit (JDK) 21 or higher
• Maven
• (Optional) VS Code + Java Extension Pack

git clone https://github.com/AdrielHercules/java-game-of-life.git
cd java-game-of-life
mvn clean install
mvn clean package

# Run after build
java -jar target/game-of-life-1.0-release.jar

This project includes microbenchmarks written with JMH to compare the performance of the two implementations.

mvn clean verify
java -cp .\target\game-of-life-1.0-release.jar org.openjdk.jmh.Main

The project provides two different approaches to simulating the game, allowing comparison of design and performance trade-offs:

• gameoflife.simulation.oop — Object-oriented approach. Cells and board modeled as objects; prioritizes clarity and extensibility.
• gameoflife.simulation.fast — Data-driven / performance focused approach. Uses primitive arrays and cache-friendly algorithms to maximize speed and reduce GC overhead.

The project provides two ways of rendering the simulation:

• ConsoleViewer — ASCII-based rendering in the terminal
• RaylibVisualizer (Raylib via Jaylib) - 2D renderer using Jaylib (A Java Raylib binding).

Feel free to submit issues, pull requests and new features.