Conway's Game of Life Java Implementation

Question

Keep state the same if it doesn't fall in the following conditions:

1. Change to 2 if there are exactly 2 ones in the neighbors
2. Change to 3 if there are more than 2 ones in the neighbors

It is also wrapping around so neighbors can be cyclic.

I wrote a basic structure and modularized it to individual functions. I wish to understand better coding techniques and how I can improve.

package code.Misc;
public class changeStateGame {
public static void main(String args[]){

    int current[][] = {
            {0,0,0,0,0,0,0},
            {0,0,0,0,1,0,0},
            {0,0,0,1,1,0,0},
            {0,0,1,1,0,0,0},
            {0,0,0,0,0,0,0}
    };
    int aux [][] = new int [current.length][current[0].length];

    for(int i=0;i<current.length;i++){
        for(int j=0;j<current[0].length;j++){
            aux[i][j]=0;
        }
    }

    System.out.println("Current State");
    printStateGame(current);
    System.out.println("Changed State");
    printStateGame(changeState(current,aux,0,aux[0].length));

}

public static void printStateGame(int a[][]){
    for(int i=0;i<a.length;i++){
        for(int j=0;j<a[0].length;j++){
            System.out.print(a[i][j]+" ");
        }
        System.out.println();
    }
}


public static int [][] changeState(int c[][],int a[][], int row, int col){

    for(int i=0;i<a.length;i++){
        for(int j=0;j<a[0].length;j++){
            a[i][j]=checkNeighbors(c,i,j);
        }
    }
    return a;
}

public static int checkNeighbors(int a[][],int row,int col){

        int neighborCount = 0;
        for(int i=row-1;i<row+1;i++){
            for(int j=col-1;j<col+1;j++){

                        if (i < 0)
                            i = a.length - 1;
                        if (j < 0)
                            j = a[0].length - 1;
                        if (i == a.length)
                            i = 0;
                        if (j == a[0].length)
                            j = 0;
                        if(i==row){
                            if(j==col){
                                continue;
                            }
                        }
                        if(j==col){
                            if(i==row){
                                continue;
                            }
                        }
                        neighborCount += checkElement(a[i][j]);

            }
        }
    return modifyElement(a[row][col],neighborCount);
}
public static int checkElement(int a){
    if(a==1)
        return 1;
    else
        return 0;
}

public static int modifyElement(int a, int count){
    if(count<2){
        return a;
    }
    else if (count == 2){
        return 2;
    }
    else {
        return 3;
    }
}
}

Answer 1

Bug 1

Your neighbor counting loops are only iterating twice instead of three times, so you aren't counting neighbors to the right or below.

Bug 2

If you were to correct Bug 1, your program would infinite loop in checkNeighbors because you modify your loop variables inside the loop when they wrap around. So for example, if col is the rightmost column, you will set j to 0 inside the loop which will cause the j loop to never terminate.

Bug 3

You sometimes set your array elements to 2 or 3. But in Life, each array element should be 0 or 1 only. Your modifyElement function is incorrect.

Dead code

These two blocks of code are identical, so the second is useless:

                    if(i==row){
                        if(j==col){
                            continue;
                        }
                    }
                    if(j==col){
                        if(i==row){
                            continue;
                        }
                    }

Unused arguments

The changeState function has two unused arguments: row and col.