Evolve is an evolution-based organism designer and GPU-accelerated artificial life simulator that combines interactive particle physics with a real-time simulation editor. At its core, it runs genetic algorithm evolution on self-replicating graph structures to evolve digital organisms, offloading particle physics, neural networks, and rendering entirely to the GPU through a compute shader pipeline for real-time performance.
The project distinguishes itself with graph-based organism design that uses a directed graph editor to visually define organism structure, connections, and neural controllers, all manipulable live during simulation. Spatiotemporal parameter variation systematically changes simulation parameters across spatial regions and over time to create heterogeneous environments, while headless simulation execution allows running evolution from the command line with configurable parameters and time steps.
Beyond its core identity, Evolve provides particle physics simulation handling soft body dynamics, fluids, heat, and damage, along with neural network particle control that enables learned behavior without hard-coded rules. It includes interactive editors for designing agents, environments, and custom organisms, plus a built-in community simulation browser for discovering, sharing, and upvoting simulations.