Introduction

ascii-things is four small artificial-life simulations drawn as glyphs on a canvas: a shark tank, a robot factory floor, a jellyfish bloom, and a robot dog test yard. Each one runs on its own rules, respects reduced motion, and ships with no runtime dependencies.

Same seed and size produce the same scene. Different palette changes the ink, not the behavior. One canvas is the whole surface.

AbyssnightPaperdayNeonloudMonoquiet

PauseCalm off

LIVE

CELLS

—

UNITS

—

STATE

—

FPS

—

Click to throw the ball, or type a command below.

Tell the dog what to fetch

›Throw

yard@04 · awaiting commandEnter submits · the dog fetches the ball

Seed 7, columns 110, and speed 1 are fixed in this demo. The palette and calm controls update the running engine without rebuilding the world.

Start here

InstallationAdd the package, choose a subpath, and import the optional UI stylesheet.

QuickstartThe smallest React, vanilla, and plain HTML examples that actually run.

ReactLive props, remount rules, sizing, and the client-component contract.

API referenceEvery option, default, event, statistic, and engine method in one table.

What you get

• Four scenes, one shape. palette, seed, speed, columns, maxCells, maxDpr, calm, interactive, label, and onEvent behave the same everywhere.
• Three adapters. React components from ascii-things/react, vanilla create* factories from scene subpaths, and <ascii-*> custom elements.
• An optional UI layer. ascii-things/ui adds a framed stage, command input, live readout, palette tabs, and a full dog-hero recipe.
• Calm defaults. Decorative canvases are hidden from assistive technology unless you pass label. Reduced motion settles the world to a still frame. Off-screen scenes pause.

Version

This site tracks main

The latest published release is 0.4.0. The next release (0.5.0) adds paused, aspectRatio, onReady, fontFamily, palette="auto", adaptive quality, and the uniform trigger() scene action across the React and custom-element adapters.

The four scenes

Scene	What it does	Import
Shark tank	Fish school and flee; sharks hunt, splash, and settle.	ascii-things/sharks
Robot floor	Robots patrol, scan, haul, queue for a dock, and recharge.	ascii-things/robots
Jellyfish bloom	Jellies pulse on a current, trail tentacles, and ring on contraction.	ascii-things/jellyfish
Robot dog	A quadruped trots, sniffs, sits, fetches a ball, and docks.	ascii-things/dog

Read the scene overview for the shared model, or jump to sharks, robots, jellyfish, and the dog.