??!! 0 Newbie Poster

i really need your help and really fast. i've been working on this project where i am supposed to create a simulation of conway's game of life.

A cell can only be in one of two states: alive or dead. There are two kinds of cells: ConwayCells and FredkinCells.

Live ConwayCells are denoted with an asterisk, "*", and dead cells are denoted with a period, "." A ConwayCell has 8 neighbours, if it's an interior cell, 5 neighbours, if it's an edge cell, and 3 neighbours, if it's a corner cell

ConwayCells do not have the notion of age, FredkinCells do. A FredkinCells' age is initially zero and only increments by one if the cell is alive and stays alive. Live FredkinCells are denoted with their age, if their age is less than 10, otherwise denoted with a plus, "+", and dead cells are denoted with a minus, "-". A FredkinCell has 4 neighbours, if it's an interior cell, 3 neighbours, if it's an edge cell, and 2 neighbours, if it's a corner cell.

The rules for going from one generation to the next for ConwayCells are:

a dead cell becomes a live cell, if exactly 3 neighbours are alive
a live cell becomes a dead cell, if less than 2 or more than 3 neighbours are alive
The rules for going from one generation to the next for FredkinCells are:

a dead cell becomes a live cell, if 1 or 3 neighbours are alive
a live cell becomes a dead cell, if 0, 2, or 4 neighbours are alive
I have to create 5 classes: *Cell class(abstract) from which two are derived ConwayCell and FredkinCell where each of these cells knows how to print itself, whether it is alive or not and how many neighbours are alive. *Life class(abstract) from which two others are derived : fredkinLife and conwayLife.the subclasses should have functions that keeps track of the grid (2d dynamic array) and generation , that plays life , that evolves , and that prints itself.

And a LifeFactory class that would shoose between creating a fredkinLife or a ConwayLife.

To push Life forward one generation (evolve), traverse the grid of cells, only notice the live cells, and for each of them, visit the neighbours and increment their respective neighbour counts. Remember that the two kinds of cells have different definitions of neighbour. Traverse the grid a second time, set the next state, and zero out the neighbour count. Remember that the two kinds of cells have different rules for the next state.

In a main program, you will read in initial board states from an input file and iterate through several generations of the game of life.

basicaly i need someone to help me implement the functions grid , play, and evolve.
but before i need to know if my posted code is correct.

#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
using namespace std;

const int _rows = 109;
const int _columns = 69;
const int maxRows = 20;
const int maxColumns = 20;

class Cell{

protected:
char cell;
int  count; // nb of neighbors alive

public:

Cell( char unit = NULL , int n = 0 ){
    cell = unit;
    count = n; 
}

int get_count(){
    return count;
}

virtual bool is_live()=0;
virtual int _neighbors()=0;
virtual void print();
};

class ConwayCell : public Cell {

public:

ConwayCell( char unit = NULL , int n = 0  ){

    count = n;
    cell = unit;;

}

bool is_live(){
    if( cell = '*' )
        return true;
    else if( cell = '.' )
        return false;
}

int _neighbors(){
    char c[_rows][_columns] = {0};
    for( int i=0; i<_rows ; ++i){
        for( int j=0; j<_columns ; ++j){

            //if( (i == 0 && j == 0) || ( i == _rows - 1  && j == _columns - 1 ) || (i == 0 && j == _columns - 1 ) || (i == _rows && j == 0) ){

            if( c[ i + 1][j] == '*')   
                count++;
            if( c[i][j+1] == '*')
                count++;
            if( c[i+1][j+1] == '*')
                count++;
            if( c[i-1][j] == '*')
                count++;
            if( c[i-1][j-1] == '*')
                count++;
            if( c[i][j-1] == '*')
                count++;
            if( c[i-1][j+1] == '*')
                count++;
            if( c[i+1][j-1] == '*')
                count++;

        }
    }
    return count;
}



void print(){
    if( ConwayCell::is_live())
        cout << '*' ;
    else
        cout << '.' ;
}
};



class FredkinCell : public Cell {
int cellAge;

public:
FredkinCell( char unit = NULL , int n = 0 , int age = 0 ){
    count = n;
    cell = unit;
    cellAge = age;
    if(cell == '+')
        cellAge = 10;
    else if (cell != '-') 
        age = (cell - '0');
}

int get_age(){
    return cellAge;
}

bool is_live(){
    switch (cell){
        case '0':
        case '1':
        case '2':   
        case '3':
        case '4':       
        case '5':
        case '6':
        case '7':
        case '8':
        case '9':
        case '+':
            return true;
            break;
        default:
            return false;
    }

}
char age(){
    if(!FredkinCell::is_live())
        return '-';
    else if(cellAge>9) 
        return '+';
    return cellAge + '0';
}




int _neighbors(){

    char c[maxRows][maxColumns];

    for( int i=0; i<maxRows ; ++i){
        for( int j = 0; j<maxColumns ; ++j){

            if( (c[i+1][j] >= '0'  && c[i+1][j] < '10') || c[i+1][j] == '+'  )   
                count++;
            if( (c[i][j+1] >= '0'  && c[i][j+1] < '10') || c[i][j+1] == '+')
                count++;
            if( (c[i+1][j+1] >= '0'  && c[i+1][j+1] < '10') || c[i+1][j+1] == '+')
                count++;
            if( (c[i-1][j] >= '0'  && c[i-1][j] < '10') || c[i-1][j] == '+')
                count++;
            if( (c[i-1][j-1] >= '0'  && c[i-1][j-1] < '10') || c[i-1][j-1] == '+')
                count++;
            if( (c[i][j-1] >= '0'  && c[i][j-1] < '10') || c[i][j-1] == '+')
                count++;
            if( (c[i-1][j+1] >= '0'  && c[i-1][j+1] < '10') || c[i-1][j+1] == '+')
                count++;
            if( (c[i+1][j-1] >= '0'  && c[i+1][j-1] < '10') || c[i+1][j-1] == '+')
                count++;
        }
    }
    return count;
}


void print(){
    for( int i=0; i < maxRows ; ++i){
        for( int j=0; j< maxColumns; ++j){
            if(!FredkinCell::is_live())
                cout << "-" ;
            else 
                cout << cell ;
        }
    }
}


};

class Life {

Cell ** c;
int generation;
int population;

public:

Life(Cell **cell = NULL, int g=0, int p=0){
    cell = c; 
    generation = g;
    population = p;
}

virtual void grid() = 0;
virtual void evolve() = 0;
virtual void play() =0;
virtual void print() =0; 
};

class ConwayLife {

public:

ConwayLife(){
    c = new char * [_rows];
    for( int i=0; i< _rows ; ++i)
        c[i] = new char[_columns];
}


void grid();
void play();
void evolve();

void print (){
    for( int i=0; i< _rows; ++i){
        for( int j=0; j< _columns ; ++j){
            cout << c[i][j] << " ";
        }
        cout << endl;
    }
}


~ConwayLife(){
    for( int i=0; i< _rows;++i)
        delete [] c[i];
    delete [] c;
}
};

class FredkinLife {

public:

FredkinLife(){
    c = new char * [_rows];
    for( int i=0; i< _rows ; ++i)
        c[i] = new char[_columns];
}


void grid();
void play();
void evolve();

void print (){
    for( int i=0; i< maxRows; ++i){
        for( int j=0; j< maxColumns ; ++j){
            cout << c[i][j] << " ";
        }
        cout << endl;
    }
}


~FredkinLife(){
    for( int i=0; i< maxRows;++i)
        delete [] c[i];
    delete [] c;
}

};