# chrxh/alien

ALIEN is a CUDA-powered artificial life simulation program.

Repository: https://github.com/chrxh/alien
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/alien
Homepage: https://alien-project.org
Language: C++
License: BSD-3-Clause
License Family: permissive
Topics: artificial-life, open-ended-evolution, agent-based-simulation, physics-engine, cuda
Last push: 2026-08-26T20:10:16+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 74/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 28, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 2144, "days_push": 7, "days_rel": 612, "gap_med": 35, "n_releases_24m": 2}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 5490, forks 189 (observed 2026-08-28T04:09:19.793718+00:00)

## What it is
ALIEN is a CUDA-powered artificial life simulation application that simulates digital organisms as particle networks with genetics and neural networks, running entirely on GPU for real-time large-scale simulations. It includes a modern GUI with graph and genome editors, rendering via OpenGL, and a built-in simulation sharing browser.

## Use cases
- simulate evolving ecosystems of digital organisms
- run open-ended evolution experiments on GPU
- design custom creatures with a genome editor
- explore soft body and fluid physics in real time
- study conditions for prebiotic evolution and complexity growth
- create self-replicating agents in an artificial life sandbox

## When to choose
- you need large-scale real-time artificial life or agent-based simulation accelerated by CUDA
- you want visual editing tools to design organisms and experiment playfully
- you have an NVIDIA GPU (Pascal or newer) and want an open-source evolution simulator

## When to avoid
- you lack an NVIDIA GPU with compute capability 6.0 or higher
- you need CPU-only simulation or a headless programmatic library rather than a GUI application
- you need up-to-date documentation, which the project admits is outdated

## Facets
- artifact type: application
- maturity: active
- function: simulation, graphics, gui, machine-learning
- domain: simulation, artificial-intelligence, graphics, education
- platform: windows, cross-platform, cpp
- tags: artificial-life, cuda, open-ended-evolution, agent-based-simulation, soft-body-physics, neural-networks, genetic-algorithms, digital-organisms, physics-engine, linux, gpu

## Member repositories
- chrxh/alien (main) score 74

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:19.793718+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T17:56:20.782795+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/chrxh/alien (fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:19.793718+00:00, sha 84845fc44560)
  - homepage: https://alien-project.org (fetched 2026-08-29T08:51:35.522195+00:00, sha e0bb53cadb56)
  - site_page: https://alien-project.org/getting-started.html (fetched 2026-08-29T08:51:35.531294+00:00, sha 505e8af82166)
  - site_page: https://alien-project.org/about-me.html (fetched 2026-08-29T08:51:35.533388+00:00, sha ea1e1ff99a2d)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.