javascriptalgorithmmultidimensional-array

Conway's Game of Life - How to fake an "infinite" 2d plane

I'm using a 2d array to represent the grid of cells. When a cell on an edge or in a corner checks it's neighbors that would be out of bounds, it treats them as permanently dead. 

function getCell(row, column) {
  if(row === -1 || row === cellMatrix.length || column === -1 || column === cellMatrix[0].length)
  {
    return 0;
  }
  else return cellMatrixCopy[row][column];
}

I'd just like to get rid of behavior like gliders halting and turning into blocks when they reach the edge of the grid. How would you "get rid" of the edges of the array?

You can checkout the full implementation here. Thanks in advance.

Solution

  • How to fake an “infinite” 2d plane?

    To create an infinite dimension game board use a sparse matrix representation where the row and column indicies are arbitrary-precision integers. Roughly as follows:

    map<pair<BigInt,BigInt>, Cell> matrix;

Cell& get_cell(BigInt x, BigInt y)
{
    return matrix[make_pair[x,y]];
}