gLife
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# Things to fiddle with

The preferences menu item from the Settings Menu produces a new window containing three sections. The contents of these can be customised to your choice.

## General preferences

Two options, currently:

Initial number of animals

  You can increase or decrease the number of animals you start with here. You can either focus your mouse pointer in the box and type in the number you want, or you can use the arrow-shaped buttons to alter the number. The default is 150 animals. The range is from 2 animals to 625.

Milliseconds per update

  `gLife` updates at regular intervals. By default, the interval is 1.5 seconds. You can type in a new number when the mouse pointer is focused in the box, or use the arrow-shaped buttons to alter it. The range is from 100ms to 9999ms (one tenth of a second to just under ten seconds). Be warned that very fast updates will require a lot of CPU to redraw the screen so fast and make it difficult to end the simulation.

## Display preferences

For setting your favourite colours and other display options.

Colour animals by sex

  As it suggests, colour animals by sex controls whether animals are coloured by sex or not. The default is that they are.

Male animal colour

  Clicking on `male animal colour` brings up the `GNOME colour selector` for you to change the colour of the little boy animals. They begin as blue and slightly transparent.

Female animal colour

  Clicking on `female animal colour` brings up the `GNOME colour selector` for you to change the colour of the little girl animals. They begin as red and slightly transparent.

Terrain colour

  Clicking on `terrain colour` brings up the `GNOME colour selector` for you to change the colour of the terrain. Terrain begins as opaque yellow; and the larger the area of a square on the grid which is coloured, the more food is available there.

Enable grid display

  Clicking on enable grid display toggles whether the lines of the grid are drawn or not. The default is is that they are drawn. Disabling this speeds up the redrawing of the display slightly.

Enable terrain display

  Clicking on enable terrain display toggles whether or not the terrain is drawn in. The default is to draw it. Disabling this speeds up the redrawing of the display greatly.

Enable animals display

  Clicking on enable animals display toggles whether or not the animals themselves are drawn. The default, not surprisingly, is that animals are drawn. Disabling it moderately speeds up redrawing of the display -- but of course you don't see the animals then...

## Age preferences

You can give your animals an upper age limit or range. When they reach that stage they will die. (Aww!). Their default age range is between 75-100 but can be set to any range between 50 and 115. If you want your animals to be immortal, you can unselect enforce age limits by clicking on it.

## Reproduction preferences

Allow reproduction

  The allow reproduction checkbox must be on for the settings underneath to have any effect. It is enabled by default.

Minimum reproduction age

  The `minimum reproduction age` box allows you to decide how old animals must be to reproduce. The default is eighteen and the range is from one to thirty-five.

Minimum food needed for reproduction

  The `minimum food for reproduction` box allows you to decide how much food is necessary for reproduction. The default is 25 and the range is from zero to 250.

Percentage of food to give children

  The `percentage of food to give children` box determines how much of the animal's food it will give to its offspring. The default is 50% and the range is from zero to 99%.

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