Thread: Conways Game of Life. Long Death option. Please help..

Okay, so for my Java class we have been instructed to make a java program that implements Conway's Game of Life. Where, when run, a grid shows, allows the user to declare which cells are "alive (green cells)", and runs through by checking the rules (rule 1. if a dead cell has 3 neighbors, make it alive, rule 2. if an alive cell has 2 OR 3 neighbors, keep alive, rule 3. otherwise make the cell "dead(white cells") I have that part of the code running and working correctly.
But the second part of the assignment asks me to make it so that there is a phase between it being alive and dead, meaning if an alive cell is going to be dead in the next step, fill the cell with a different color (i.e. yellow) to show that it is going to die, and then kill it on its next run through the grid.

here is a link to my assignment with detailed instructions if mine didn't make sense:
cs205: Problem Set 1: Game of Life
(instructions are at the very end of the page)

CellState.java is the one that basically creates dead and alive cells.
I have been trying to make a method in there to create this "dying" state for the cell so that I can make a conditional statement in the ConwayLifeCell.java to make these "dying" state cells before actually killing them.
The problem I am running into is that since alive in the CellState.java is already a boolean, I'm not sure how to implement another true or false in the class to tell whether it's dying or dead. Please help.. I've attached a .zip file with the whole source for this program.. please ignore the ExtremeLifeCell.java one, that one is just an example class to allow us students to have a basic idea of how it's suppose to run.

Please and thank you

I know that this program is using enumerations, since it was a package given to me, but I'm not quite sure how enumerations work in these cases..

Thank you for those quick tutorials.
So.. I understand what they actually do, but I still don't understand how I would incorporate it into this program itself..
there is a .createDead() and .createAlive() in the CellState.java that will create a dead cell or an alive cell. From my pseudo code, I'm pretty sure I am going to be needing .createDying() or something of the sort for those dying cells.

// CS205 Fall 2006
// CellState.java
 
import java.awt.Color;
 
public class CellState {
	// OVERVIEW: A CellState is an immutable object that represents
	// the state of a cell, either alive or dead.
 
	private boolean alive;
 
	private CellState(boolean isalive)
	// EFFECTS: Initializes this to alive if isalive is true,
	// otherwise initializes this to the dead state.
	{
		this.alive = isalive;
	}
 
	static public/* nonnull */CellState createAlive()
	// EFFECTS: Returns an alive cell state.
	{
		return new CellState(true);
	}
 
	static public/* nonnull */CellState createDead()
	// EFFECTS: Returns a dead cell state.
	{
		return new CellState(false);
	}
 
	public Color getColor() 
	// EFFECTS: Returns the display color for this state
	{
		if (alive) return Color.green;
		else return Color.white;
 
	}
 
	public boolean equals(CellState s) {
		return s.alive == alive;
	}
 
	public boolean equals(Object o) {
		try {
			return equals((CellState) o);
		} catch (ClassCastException e) {
			return false;
		}
	}
 
	public boolean isAlive()
	// EFFECTS: Returns true iff this is alive.
	{
		return alive;
	}
}

since enumerations is used when trying to make constants, I would no longer need the boolean?

Someone please help.. I've been working on this for hours for the last few days and I can't figure it out..