amiantos/lifesaver

Conway's Game of Life implemented as an artistic, abstract macOS screensaver and tvOS app using SpriteKit

Life Saver

Life Saver is an abstract, artistic implementation of Conway's Game of Life built with SpriteKit. With a variety of settings and color schemes, Life Saver should satisfy designers and geeks alike. Comes in two flavors: a macOS screensaver, and an Apple TV app.

🖥  Screensaver

📼 Watch a YouTube video to see it in action.

👉 Download Life Saver v1.2 for macOS

📺  Apple TV

👉 Get Life Saver TV on the App Store

To Install from Source

1. git clone https://github.com/amiantos/lifesaver.git
2. Open Life Saver.xcworkspace
3. Pick a target and run!

lifesaver's Issues

High CPU Usage by legacyScreenSaver Process on MacBook M1 After Sonoma 14.X Update

Environment:

• Device: MacBook M1
• OS: Sonoma 14.X
• Application: LifeSaver Screen Saver

Issue Description:
After updating my MacBook M1 to Sonoma 14.X, I've started experiencing an issue with the LifeSaver screen saver causing excessive CPU usage. Specifically, the legacyScreenSaver process consumes over 100% CPU. This issue began immediately following the OS update.

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Update the MacBook M1 to Sonoma 14.X.
2. Use LifeSaver as the screen saver.
3. Observe the legacyScreenSaver process's CPU usage in Activity Monitor.

Expected Behavior:
The legacyScreenSaver process should not consume excessive CPU resources, allowing the screen saver to run smoothly without impacting system performance.

Actual Behavior:

• The legacyScreenSaver process exceeds 100% CPU usage when the LifeSaver screen saver is active.
• Restarting the MacBook and changing the screen saver temporarily resolves the issue, but it reoccurs when switching back to LifeSaver.
• It appears that the screen saver might be causing the legacyScreenSaver process to persistently use CPU resources in the background, even when not active. Additionally, entering the screen saver seems to compound the CPU usage each time, suggesting possible resource allocation or release issues.

Troubleshooting Steps Taken:

• Changed the screen saver to default
• Restarted the MacBook M1 or kill process 'legacyScreenSaver-x86_64'

Request:

• Could the compatibility of LifeSaver with Sonoma 14.X on MacBook M1 be investigated?
• Is this issue observed on other Mac models, particularly those not using Intel processors?

Additional Information:

• This problem was not present before the Sonoma 14.X update, indicating a potential compatibility issue with the new OS version.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. I look forward to any updates or suggestions for resolving this issue.

Support for displays in portrait/vertical mode

When I use the screensaver on a 23" Lenovo LI2364d monitor in portrait mode, the pixels appear rectangular:

Hue Integration

It might be cool if Life Saver TV integrated with Hue lights, changing hue lights around the TV to match the dominant colors on the television.

Change color presets while running?

Might be cool if the random color preset option also changes the color preset every time a tank dies out...

Preset randomizer

Might be cool to have a setting that randomizes between color presets and/or setting presets

Make "Dark/Light" background independent of random colors toggle

It would be great if random colors could be selected with either a dark or light background instead of being part of the randomization.

Color preset picker should detect selected preset

Unlike the settings preset picker, the color preset picker seems unaware of which preset you're using on subsequent openings of the config sheet

Preview doesn't work

I'm on macOS Mojave 10.14.5

Optimization

I could reduce memory usage by sharing the SKTexture between all nodes. 🤦‍♂

PKG seems to be built in unexpected way

While trying to unpack lifesaver-1.1.pkg I'm getting following error:

% pkgutil --expand lifesaver-1.1.pkg ./lifesaver
pkgutil(37305,0x11926a5c0) malloc: can't allocate region
*** mach_vm_map(size=255086697644032) failed (error code=3)
pkgutil(37305,0x11926a5c0) malloc: *** set a breakpoint in malloc_error_break to debug
[1]    37305 abort      pkgutil --expand lifesaver-1.1.pkg ./lifesaver

Sometime you run in environment there you can't provide administrator user and password. For such environments you would use screensaver name.saver file to install it only for local user. This is I'm trying to unpack your wallpaper.

Optimize Neighbor Generation

With the optimization from #8, Life Saver could support even greater quantities of nodes, however the CPU bottleneck on launch for neighbor generation is huge. If I use the looping matrix from Ant Saver, it may greatly speed up neighbor generation.

Visual glitches / issues

I think due to general bugginess with SpriteKit, there's some wonkiness with certain color combos or just in general. I see blocks switching their colors without fading in, stuff like that.

Bloom Effect

It would be cool if a bloom effect could be added to living cells. If you use the "Noun Project" preset and squint from a distance it looks a bit like the effect in LIMBO, looks really cool. I tried a quick implementation using an SKEffectNode but handling all the fading and animations seems trickier than expected.

Does not work with MacOS 12.2.1

After the latests upgrade to MacOS 12.2.1, Lifesaver no longer works and instead gives a messages as screensaver that this screensaver doesn't work with this version of MacOS and to please contact the author.

Unsure if this is relevant too (and unable to check), I am running an M1 chip.

tvOS Version

• Might be cool to expand the tvOS version with a full tvOS UI

Implement Hashlife

It might be fun to try to learn how hashlife works and implement it for even more optimization