What
A fixed-size, toroidal cellular automaton with bit-packed storage and a Canvas renderer styled as a restrained CRT workstation.
Project / Game of Life
Small core, living display.
Conway's Game of Life began here as a Rust learning project in 2023. It now runs as an independent Lab module without making the rest of the website carry its runtime.
Why
It preserves an early Rust project while turning it into something directly explorable, rather than leaving it as a static code sample.
Technical choices
- Rust owns simulation state and generation updates.
- WebAssembly exposes a zero-copy view of bit-packed cells.
- Plain JavaScript owns rendering, input, and lifecycle.
Current status
Running in Lab 01 with pointer and keyboard controls, reduced-motion behavior, visibility pausing, and deterministic Rust tests.
Implementation process
The simulation was tightened around a bit-packed, reusable two-buffer core; the renderer then gained direct alternating memory views, accessible input, visibility pausing, and explicit cleanup. This refactor moved those working pieces behind an independent Lab route.