Re: [life] Number of Players

[Alexandre Owen Muniz <munizao@xprt.net>]

[Eric Shultz wrote, and I cut and pasted from the archive]

> We could double the alphabet and use symbols.  If Life catches on and 
> becomes that popular, it would be interesting to see how many 
> simultaneous players there were.  For starters, though, how about we set 
> it at 26, since we have a limited space to play in?  Neutral cells would 
> be an asterisk or some other character.  Anyone opposed?  

Following the tradition of Viruses, neutral cells should be the '@'
character, and empty cells should be '.'. (And the '*' is traditionally
me. :))

Nick Waterman wrote:

> > Number of players - Theoretically infinite.  Practically, I
> > would say 26 (each gets a letter of the alphabet), or
> > however many letters, numbers, and symbols can be displayed
> > on everyone's email.
> 
> You could immediately double it by simply using upper AND lower case,
> but in practice, I suspect that even 26 players at a time is likely to
> be WAY too chaotic.

Possibly. If it's anything like Viruses, mostly one only has to deal
with one's immediate neighbors in the short term, unless one is doing
particularly well, in which case everyone gangs up on one. :) However,
Viruses effectively gives you only one movement point per turn, which
makes it a little more controlled. (of course, you can place new cells
anywhere, which is often more powerful than just moving cells.) That
said, 26 players is a more than reasonable limit.

**Ali Muņiz