2D Cellular Automata Engine (Sand Simulation)

A 2D Cellular Automata Simulation Engine built using C++ and SDL2. This project serves as a high-performance particle simulation engine, efficiently managing real-time rendering and complex state updates for thousands of active, interacting particles.

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Key Features
• Tech Stack
• Roadmap & Future Optimizations
• Getting Started
• License

Overview

This project implements cellular automata rules to simulate the physical behavior of granular materials (like sand) in real-time. The core engine is responsible for grid management, particle state transitions, and continuous frame rendering, serving as a functional Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for physics-based grid simulations.

Key Features

• Real-Time Physics Engine: Handles the logic and state updates for thousands of active particles seamlessly.
• Fast Rendering Pipeline: Utilizes SDL2 for efficient 2D graphical output directly tied to the simulation grid.
• Automated CI/CD: Integrated a CI/CD pipeline using GitHub Actions to automate builds and testing across different platforms (Linux/Windows), ensuring continuous code stability.

Tech Stack

• Language: C++
• Graphics/Windowing: SDL2 (Simple DirectMedia Layer)
• Build System: CMake
• DevOps: GitHub Actions (Cross-platform CI/CD)

Roadmap & Future Optimizations

While the engine is fully functional at an MVP level, several system-level optimizations are planned to scale the simulation to handle millions of particles efficiently:

• Spatial Partitioning (Chunking): Dividing the simulation grid into active and inactive chunks to prevent the engine from processing empty space, drastically reducing CPU cycles.
• Multi-threading: Transitioning from a single-threaded update loop to a multi-threaded architecture (e.g., using std::jthread or thread pools) to process independent grid chunks in parallel.
• SIMD Instructions: Exploring vectorization for particle state updates to maximize hardware efficiency.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• CMake (3.25+)
• C++ Compiler (GCC, Clang, or MSVC)
• SDL2 Library (development headers)
• vcpkg for dependency management (SDL2, fmt)

Build Instructions

git clone https://github.com/makifcevik/sdl2_sand_simulation.git
cd sdl2_sand_simulation

# Configure the project (replace with your actual vcpkg path)
cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE="C:/PATH_TO_vcpkg/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake"

# Compile the project
cmake --build build --config Release

Running the Simulation

After building, you can run the executable generated in the build directory:

# On Linux
./build/Simulation

# On Windows
.\build\app\Release\Simulation.exe

How To Play

• Use left click to place sand.
• Use right click to erase sand.
• Scroll up or down to adjust the brush size.

License

Distributed under the MIT License.