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Asked: 2026-05-27T16:10:51+00:00

I want to make a toroidal array for a Game of Life clone. How

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I want to make a toroidal array for a Game of Life clone. How do I make it toroidal?

I’ve been thinking and the best solution I could think of, was just saying that the first row and column are equal to the last row and column.

Any other ideas?

EDIT: Maybe some people don’t know what the Game of Life is? It’s a small game with cells, in an array. These cells can be dead or alive and react to each other. Whenever a cell reaches the edge of my current solution, it bumps into a row/column of all dead cells. What I want to do now is, when a cell reaches the edge, it just pops up on the other side. (see the image below)

enter image description here

What my code looks like now:

#region check adjacent squares
        if (grid[x - 1,y - 1] == true)
            adjacentsquares++;              
        if (grid[x, y - 1] == true)
            adjacentsquares++;              
        if (grid[x + 1, y -1] == true)
            adjacentsquares++;              
            
        if (grid[x - 1, y] == true)
            adjacentsquares++;
        if (grid[x + 1, y] == true)
            adjacentsquares++;
            
        if (grid[x - 1, y + 1] == true)
            adjacentsquares++;
        if (grid[x, y + 1] == true)
            adjacentSquares +=1;
        if (grid[x + 1, y + 1] == true)
            adjacentSquares +=1;
#endregion

What I now need is that, whenever I want to check an adjacent cell (that would be out of bounds in a regular array) that it checks the one on the other side.

If I check position [10,0]. I need to check adjacent cells [9, max], [10, max] and [11, max].

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I’m not sure I get your idea right, but why don’t you create a method that encapsulates the access to your array and that accesses 

    array[x % max, y % max]

    , where x and y are both ints passed to this method.

    Explaining it a little further:
    Say you have an array like array[sizeX, sizeY]. If you want to access the first position of your array, say array[0, 0], you could do it like array[0, 0] or array[sizeX, sizeY], since it wraps around both its X and Y dimensions (a toroidal array). Therefore, you could use the modulus operator, and always access your array like this: 

    array[desiredXPosition % sizeX, desiredYPosition % sizey]

    Or better yet, create a method that does this automatically for you.

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