Oct 18, 2026, 5:14 PM

the inspiration for this is the grid-based pattern-rewriting language i've been collaborating on with some games people (play around with it at https://crowdgames.github.io/trrbt/edengine.html !). the first image is the visual syntax in our web-based editor vs. some speculative text-based syntax for the 2d parts

a visually-laid-out syntax tree for a program that initializes a grid of characters, then has some control flow whose terminal nodes are rewrite rules. they're cellular-automata style rewrites that have a left- and right-hand side, where the idea is if the LHS appears as a subpattern in the grid, it's replaced with the RHS.

text-based syntax for a single rule and initial board pattern:

rule grow =
. _ . . _ .
. _ . -o . X .
. X . . X .

pattern init =
_ _ _ _
* _ _ _
_ _ _ _
_ & _ _
X _ X _