Flash Page

FLASH

THE GAME AND THE PROGRAM

Flash, the program, implements Flash, the game, which is a simplified model of integrate-and-fire pulse-coupled oscillators. Fireflies are examples of such oscillators and so the pieces in the game are termed fireflies. (A bit more information is on my homepage.)

For more complete information, see the full description of the game and the program, which you should read in order to understand the following.

From most initial configurations in Flash, the fireflies will synchronize. However, from certain initial states they will instead evolve into groups which cycle stably. For a discussion and description of such cases, go to special cases. This link also leads to an example of a game which allegedly evolves in this way but which, I believe, does not in fact do so.

THE SOFTWARE

Get DOS executable (not zipped, [71 k]). To run the program, simply type "flash" at a DOS prompt. A menu will then appear. From the menu, information can be obtained about the program and the game it is based on.
Get source code [38 k]
Get zip package which includes both [63 k]

The preceding programs are free software, released under the terms of the GNU General Public License. For details, see the text file COPYING or go to http://www.gnu.org.