I can highly recommend building your own falling sand simulator. It's really fun to see how such simple rules create emergent behaviors. Sand pixels try to move down, then diagonally down. Water does the same, then tries sideways.
Me messing around with it eventually resulted in a game I'm now working on full time (think Noita meets Factorio): https://store.steampowered.com/app/2764460/Sandustry/
The world is divided into chunks and the threads are processing them simultaneously in an even-odd checker pattern to avoid race conditions. When all pixels settle in a chunk it falls asleep and can be skipped altogether until an active pixel enters and wakes it up again.
Though my favorite is Powder Game: https://dan-ball.jp/en/javagame/dust/
It has a little man you can control to jump around the landscape!
Things that I have made:
* Bronze from copper and tin
* Brass from copper and zinc
* Rose gold from copper and gold
* Electrum from gold and silver
* Solder from tin and lead (while trying to make pewter)
* Thermite from rust and ground aluminum (or directly from scrap metal)
* Reduced iron from thermite, ignited with magnesium and a fuse
* Reduced iron from rust
* Steel from rust and charcoal
* Batter and dough from flour, water, etc
* Caramel from sugar and butter
* Mayo from oil, vinegar, and egg yolk
https://sandboxels.r74n.com/new-home
It doesn't explain why though, which is the most obvious question.
I still don't know what it is.
Sort of igneous, because it came out of a volcano, but sort of sedimentary, because it starts out as an accumulation of powder that becomes a solid piece.
Wait does that mean Sandboxels will become closed source?
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