Complexity Simulation

Computational life simulator inspired by Computational Life: How Well-formed, Self-replicating Programs Emerge from Simple Interaction (Agüera y Arcas et al., 2024). The project explores how self-replicating programs evolve when subject to selective pressures inside a primordial soup of interacting Brainfuck-Fusion (BFF) organisms.

Project Goals

• Implement a Brainfuck-Fusion interpreter and tape structure.
• Model a primordial soup environment where digital organisms compete, replicate, and mutate.
• Track complexity and entropy metrics to understand emergent behaviour.
• Provide tooling for experiments, visualization, and alternative execution substrates (Forth, Z80).

Repository Layout

src/
  bff/        # Interpreter, soup, metrics (primary simulation core)
  forth/      # Planned Forth runtime integration (Issue #11)
  z80/        # Planned Z80 CPU emulation (Issue #12)
  utils/      # Shared helpers
notebooks/    # Research notebooks and exploratory analysis
visualizations/ # Plotting utilities and rendered artefacts
data/         # Input datasets and experiment results
tests/        # Automated test suite

Getting Started

1. Create and activate a Python 3.8+ virtual environment.
2. Install dependencies:

   pip install -r requirements.txt

3. Install the package in editable mode if you plan to contribute code:

   pip install -e .

4. Run the test suite:

   pytest

Roadmap

Development tasks are tracked as GitHub issues. Start with Issue #0 for repository scaffolding and proceed in numerical order to flesh out the simulator.

License

This project is licensed under the terms of the MIT License.