Crystalarium is a software toy about experimenting with digital and ternary logic by shooting blocks with lasers. It can be used to build and play with logic gates, latches, or even build a calculator or full fleged CPU.
Left: 3 words of 7 bit memory in the Crystalarium ruleset. Right: A half adder in the ternary ruleset.
Crystalarium supports multiple different simulation systems, called rulesets, which define what placable objects (agents) exist and how they interact. As of the current version, three rulesets are available.
- The Crystalarium ruleset is the default. It features 6 agent types, including the luminal gate, which allows you to easily construct most logic gates.
- The Minimal ruleset contains only 3 agent types, including the not gate for logic.
- The Ternary ruleset allows you to play with balanced ternary. It contains 8 agent types, inlcuding the ternary equivalent of and, or and not gates.
For information on how the included rulesets work, refer to the wiki.
The latest release is version 9.3.
Crystalarium is not yet finished. The core simulation is present, but some capabilities are missing. Only a few hardcoded rulesets are available, and users cannot yet make their own ruleset. The simulation system supports light-beam based rulesets, but not cellular automata. Both of these features were part of the initial premise of the project. In addition, The user interface is very minimal and there aren't many quality of life features, and performance is an issue, particularly with the graphics. This makes it impracticle to build anything too large.
I should note: I make no promise that I'll continue developing Crystalarium, but I think at some point I'd like to.