Cellular Automata Sandbox Demo

An interactive sandbox demonstrating cellular automata.

This project was heavily inspired by Noita and The Powder Toy.

Every cell on screen has a simple set of rules that it follows every game tick. This sandbox lets you place many different types of cells and observe their emergent behaviors.

You can try out this demo here

Cell Types and Behaviors:

• Falling Solids

  • Base Properties

    • affected by gravity and falls forming mounds (based on it's inertial resistance)

  • Sand

    • bad heat conductor
    • not affected by much

  • Gun Powder

    • good heat conductor
    • combusts instantly

• Liquids

  • Base Properties

    • affected by gravity and spreads to fill space
    • wets other cells

  • Water

    • good heat conductor
    • puts out fire and helps prevent fires

  • Oil

    • less dense and more viscous than water
    • highly flammable and makes other cells more flammable

• Gasses

  • Base Properties

    • rises and spreads to fill space

  • Smoke

    • less dense than air
    • great heat conductor
    • suffocates fire
    • can cause burns

  • Fire

    • needs air to stay alive
    • lights flammable cells on fire and heats up surrounding cells
    • spreads itself along flammable cells
    • great head conductor

  • Air

    • can conduct heat (currently disabled)

• Stationary Solids

  • Base Properties

    • not affected by gravity

  • Wood

    • is very flammable
    • can burn up

  • Bedrock

    • indestructible

  • Stone

    • currently indestructible

Highlights

• cells that cannot move or are inactive will 'sleep' preventing them for being checked until they can move.
• uses a custom GLSL shader to create bloom for glowing cells.
• cells can transform between states (currently limited to only a few).
• simulates heat with conductivity and spread.
• the only bottle neck for the sandbox is drawing the cells.

Next Steps

• increase performance by reducing the number of draw calls
• thread the simulation
• add more cells and rework the cell state transitions
• allow for creating custom cell types from within the sandbox
• better ui