About vivariums.net

Our Mission

vivariums.net is a Digital Life Vivarium — an interactive platform where you can observe, create, and learn about digital life forms competing in a virtual memory space.

Our mission is to bring the classic programming game CoreWar into the modern web era, making it accessible to everyone from curious beginners to experienced programmers. We believe that CoreWar is not just a game; it is a powerful educational tool for understanding low-level programming, algorithm design, and the fascinating concept of artificial life.

What is CoreWar?

CoreWar is a programming game created by A.K. Dewdney and first published in *Scientific American* in 1984. In this game, two or more programs (called "Warriors") written in an assembly-like language called Redcode compete for survival inside a shared circular memory (the "Core").

Each warrior tries to eliminate its opponent by causing all of the opponent's processes to execute a DAT instruction, which terminates the process. The last warrior with any running processes wins.

What makes CoreWar fascinating is how incredibly complex and emergent behaviors arise from just 19 simple instructions. Through decades of community evolution, warrior strategies have developed into sophisticated archetypes such as:

• Imp: The simplest self-replicating program
• Dwarf: A stationary bomber that throws DAT "bombs" at regular intervals
• Scanner: An intelligent hunter that searches for the enemy before attacking
• Vampire: A program that reprograms the enemy to jump to the vampire's own code
• Paper: A self-replicating warrior that copies itself across the core

How We Built This

vivariums.net is built with modern web technologies:

• React 19 with TypeScript for a robust, type-safe UI
• Vite with SSG (Static Site Generation) for fast page loads and SEO
• Custom MARS Engine (Mars.ts) — An enhanced simulation engine powered by Gareth Williams' open-source corewar library (ICWS-94 simulator & parser), integrated with proprietary cell ownership tracking, access logging, and structured editor synchronization.
• Canvas 2D for real-time memory visualization

The simulation runs entirely in your browser. No data is sent to our servers — your warrior code and mission progress are stored locally on your device.

Open Source Credits

We gratefully acknowledge the open-source projects and authors that make this platform possible:

• corewar — Redcode-94 parser and ICWS-94 simulator core by Gareth Williams and contributors (MIT License, Copyright © 2017 Gareth Williams).

The Team

vivariums.net is developed and maintained as an independent project dedicated to preserving and promoting the CoreWar programming game as an educational resource.

Get Involved

CoreWar has a vibrant global community. Here are some ways to get involved:

• Visit corewar.co.uk for the largest online CoreWar community
• Check out pMARS — the reference Redcode simulator
• Start our Academy to learn Redcode from scratch

Contact

For questions, feedback, or collaboration inquiries, please reach out using the form below: