Worldline Universe Studio

Worldline is a desktop simulation instrument built with C++ and raylib.

Its flagship experience is a deterministic seeded universe pipeline:

• enter a seed string
• generate a MetaSpec, LawSpec, and ObservableExtractor
• run the generated law live every frame
• render the resulting motion through the existing pendulum renderer as a visual backend

The Newtonian pendulum is still included, but it is framed as a reference system rather than the main product surface.

Product Structure

• Guided First Universe A seed-first onboarding flow that explains the deterministic pipeline and opens directly into the live workspace.
• Seed Workspace The main live simulation view with a large stage, contextual inspector, timeline, notes, saving, and direct access to trace tools.
• Universe Atlas A local gallery of saved universes with search, compare, derived descriptors, and visual fingerprints.
• Cosmos Explorer A multi-scale universe navigator with a scale ladder, object catalog, live N-body sandbox, and per-tier physics derived from the law genome.
• Trace A cleaner inspection surface for generated law summaries, preview paths, and tensor views.
• Reference System The Newtonian double-pendulum lab, preserved as a polished baseline model.

Core Principles

• deterministic seed pipeline
• no cloud dependency or telemetry
• direct-manipulation editing on the live stage
• grounded physics terminology in the UI
• renderer quality unchanged between seeded and reference modes

Interface & Design System

Worldline ships a single, cohesive interface language — a premium glassmorphic HUD built to feel like an instrument panel from a hard-sci-fi observatory, not a generic neon dashboard. Every screen is composed from one shared set of drawing primitives in src/ui/UiPrimitives.hpp, so material, depth, light, and motion read identically everywhere.

Frosted glass, done with restraint

• Every panel is a translucent frosted pane (draw_glass_panel) layered over a living starfield, so the background genuinely bleeds through the surface.
• Depth is built from real material cues rather than blur tricks: a soft drop shadow for elevation, a single low-alpha top sheen, a crisp accent hairline border, a bright top-rim light catch, and a grounded bottom shade with a powered accent underglow.
• A disciplined palette — deep-void blacks, bioluminescent cyan, exotic violet, hot xenon, and plasma green — with one accent per surface. No rainbow gradients, no glow-on-everything.

Sci-fi HUD framing

• Live HUD surfaces (title bar, simulation dock, force inspector) carry L-shaped corner brackets, tick detailing, and a slow scan-sweep line for an engineered, targeting-reticle feel.
• Status is alive but subtle: a quiet pulse on the live indicator dots only when a system is actually running — motion as seasoning, never decoration.

Atmosphere & typography

• The global backdrop layers nebula blooms, a deterministic twinkling starfield, a cinematic edge vignette, and a barely-there scanline grain.
• Type prefers a sharp, technical monospace, auto-discovered across Windows, Linux, and macOS so the instrument renders with real type on every platform.

Shared components

Cards, accented cards, buttons, badges, checkboxes, metric tiles, probe rows, and scrollbars all derive from the same glass core, giving consistent hover lift, pressed-inset feedback, and accent-aware edges across the Guided flow, Seed Workspace, Universe Atlas, Cosmos Explorer, Trace, and Reference System.

Features

• deterministic seeded universe generation
• live LawSpec stepping with observable extraction every frame
• pendulum-quality rendering and trail playback for seeded universes
• saved local universe projects with title, notes, markers, and thumbnails
• atlas search over seed text, descriptors, and derived metrics
• timeline recording with scrubbing and pinned frames
• glossary-backed terminology for advanced concepts
• persistent local settings and recent project recovery
• reference Newtonian pendulum workspace for comparison
• multi-scale Cosmos Explorer with a scale ladder, object catalog, and live N-body sandbox with per-tier physics derived from the law genome
• a 124-object catalogue spanning nine tiers, from Planck-scale quanta and the full particle zoo through the periodic table, organics, planets, exotic stars and the complete black-hole family (intermediate / supermassive / primordial) plus a wormhole, up to galaxies and the cosmic web and its voids
• real SI anchors that drive computed physics in the inspector — density, Schwarzschild radius, escape velocity, and compactness derived from G and c
• a state-of-the-art quantum & Planck-scale physics suite for the smallest tier — the "first layer of existence" — every module header-only, pure, deterministic and cited (CODATA 2022 / PDG 2024), each backed by a verification test:
  • cosmos/QuantumScale.hpp — Planck units re-derived from hbar/c/G, Compton / de Broglie / thermal wavelengths, the Compton–Schwarzschild crossover, Heisenberg bounds, the quantum harmonic oscillator, the Bohr/hydrogen ladder (13.6 eV ground state, Lyman/Balmer lines), and decay width ↔ lifetime
  • cosmos/PlanckScale.hpp — the full Planck unit system (charge, force, power, density, …) plus black-hole thermodynamics (Hawking T, Bekenstein–Hawking entropy, Page evaporation), the holographic / Bekenstein bounds, and a GUP minimal length
  • cosmos/StandardModel.hpp — electroweak relations (weak mixing angle, the Higgs VEV / Yukawa / self-coupling), conserved quantum numbers with the Gell-Mann–Nishijima charge check, the CKM matrix, and one-loop running of the gauge couplings (asymptotic freedom, α_s(M_Z) ≈ 0.118)
  • cosmos/Hadronization.hpp — builds colour-singlet hadrons from quark content and reads off their charge, baryon number and strangeness (the QCD spectrum)
  • cosmos/QuantumVacuum.hpp — Casimir pressure, the Schwinger critical field, the Unruh temperature, and the cosmological-constant problem
  • cosmos/QuantumStatistics.hpp — Fermi-Dirac / Bose-Einstein / Maxwell-Boltzmann occupation, WKB tunnelling, particle-in-a-box levels, the Gamow factor, and degeneracy pressure
  • cosmos/SpinEntanglement.hpp — the non-classical core: Pauli algebra, single-qubit gates with unitarity checks, the Bloch sphere, two-qubit entanglement (Bell states, partial trace, von Neumann entropy, Wootters concurrence), and the CHSH/Bell inequality reaching the Tsirelson bound 2√2
  • cosmos/QEDScattering.hpp — the classical electron radius and Thomson limit, Klein–Nishina Compton scattering and the wavelength shift, Rutherford/Mott Coulomb scattering, Mandelstam s+t+u, and the Breit–Wigner resonance
  • cosmos/LatticeQCD.hpp — confinement: the Cornell static-quark potential (Coulomb + linear), the string tension and its Wilson-loop area law, string breaking, Regge trajectories, and a cold-lattice plaquette / Wilson action
  • cosmos/NeutrinoOscillation.hpp — flavour oscillation probabilities, the PMNS mixing angles and mass splittings, oscillation lengths, row unitarity, and the MSW matter resonance
  • cosmos/QuantumGenesis.hpp — the generation step: synthesizes a universe's entire particle-physics content from its law genome (effective couplings, the n–p mass split, proton / deuteron / di-proton stability, the periodic-table cutoff, primordial He/H, the hadron spectrum and the early-universe epoch timeline) and returns an anthropic verdict on whether complex matter can form — surfaced live in the inspector alongside per-object rest energy, Compton wavelength and size in Planck lengths
• an ultra-advanced nuclear-physics suite for the second tier (protons, neutrons, nuclei) — same header-only, pure, deterministic, cited (PDG / textbook) idiom, each module test-backed:
  • cosmos/NuclearData.hpp — nuclear radius/density, the extended SEMF (liquid drop + pairing + Wigner), binding & separation energies, mass excess, the valley of beta stability, and the neutron/proton drip lines
  • cosmos/NuclearShell.hpp — the shell model: magic numbers (2,8,20,28,50,82,126), the spin-orbit level ordering, ground-state spin-parity, doubly-magic nuclei, and the pairing gap
  • cosmos/NuclearDecay.hpp — the decay law and every mode: alpha (Gamow + Geiger–Nuttall), beta∓/EC (Q-values, Sargent's Q⁵ rule), gamma (Weisskopf single-particle rates), and decay-mode prediction from the energetics
  • cosmos/DecayChains.hpp — the Bateman solution, secular/transient equilibrium, the four natural series (4n … 4n+3), and α/β step counts
  • cosmos/NuclearReactions.hpp — reaction/fusion Q-values, the Coulomb barrier, the Gamow peak & astrophysical S-factor, and fission (fissility Z²/A, barrier, ~200 MeV release)
  • cosmos/StellarBurning.hpp — the pp-chain and CNO cycle, triple-alpha, and the ordered advanced burning stages (C, Ne, O, Si) up to the iron peak
  • cosmos/Nucleosynthesis.hpp — the nuclear generation step: from the law genome it forges the iron peak, the s-/r-process abundance peaks pinned to the neutron magic numbers, the fission limit that caps the periodic table, the primordial He/H split, the cosmic abundance pattern and the synthesis sites, ending in an anthropic verdict — surfaced live in the navigator's inspector as a "NUCLEAR FORGE" readout on the nuclear tier
  • cosmos/NuclearStructure.hpp — collective structure: quadrupole deformation, rotational bands and moments of inertia, vibrational phonons, the rotor/vibrator R₄/₂ signature, and the giant dipole resonance + TRK sum rule
  • cosmos/BetaDecayTheory.hpp — the Fermi theory of beta decay: the Q⁵ phase space, ft / log ft classification, Fermi vs Gamow–Teller selection rules, the Fermi Coulomb function, the Kurie plot, and double beta decay
  • cosmos/FissionPhysics.hpp — asymmetric fragment mass distribution, prompt / delayed neutrons, the ~200 MeV energy partition, the fission barrier, and reactor criticality (four/six-factor formulas, reactivity)
  • cosmos/NuclearMoments.hpp — the nuclear magneton, the Schmidt single-particle magnetic moments, free-nucleon g-factors, quadrupole moments, and Larmor precession (the basis of NMR/MRI)
  • cosmos/NuclearMatter.hpp — bulk nuclear matter and neutron stars: the saturation point, incompressibility, symmetry energy, the equation of state and its pressure, beta-equilibrium neutronisation, and the neutron-star mass-radius end-points
• a comprehensive atomic-physics suite for the third tier (atoms) — same header-only, pure, deterministic, cited idiom, each module test-backed:
  • cosmos/AtomicStructure.hpp — hydrogenic energy levels and Z² scaling, the quantum numbers and orbital degeneracies, orbital radii and electron velocities, the Rydberg formula, and the fine-structure scale
  • cosmos/PeriodicTable.hpp — Aufbau/Madelung electron configurations, valence counting, period/block assignment, noble gases, and the measured periodic trends (ionization energy, atomic radius, electronegativity)
  • cosmos/AtomicSpectra.hpp — the hydrogen spectral series (Lyman/Balmer/…), term symbols, dipole selection rules, the Zeeman effect and Landé g-factor, line broadening, and the Wien/Planck blackbody law
  • cosmos/Ionization.hpp — photoionization thresholds, the Saha ionization equilibrium (the bridge to stellar atmospheres), and plasma collective behaviour (Debye length, plasma frequency)
  • cosmos/AtomicGenesis.hpp — the atomic generation step: from the law genome it sets the periodic-table extent (the relativistic Z≈1/α bound), the Rydberg/Bohr energy and size scales, and whether the CHNOPS elements of life can exist — surfaced live in the navigator's inspector as an "ATOMIC ASSEMBLY" readout on the atomic tier
  • cosmos/MultiElectronAtoms.hpp — Slater screening / effective nuclear charge, Hund's rules for ground-state terms, term multiplicity, and the Aufbau exceptions (Cr, Cu, …)
  • cosmos/LightMatter.hpp — the Einstein A/B coefficients, the photoelectric effect, Rabi flopping, Beer–Lambert absorption, and the laser population- inversion / gain condition
  • cosmos/FineStructure.hpp — Dirac fine structure (spin-orbit + relativistic + Darwin), the 21 cm hyperfine line, the QED Lamb shift, and the gross ≫ fine ≫ {Lamb, hyperfine} hierarchy
  • cosmos/ExoticAtoms.hpp — reduced-mass scaling, positronium, muonic hydrogen, and the Rydberg-atom n-power scaling laws (radius ∼ n², lifetime ∼ n³, polarizability ∼ n⁷)
  • cosmos/AtomicCollisions.hpp — geometric and Coulomb cross sections, mean free path and collision frequency, Bethe stopping power, electron-impact thresholds, and radiative recombination
• a deterministic, lazily-generated, LRU-cached procedural universe you can descend into by zooming — galaxy → star system → planet → ecosystem → creature — with bounded work and memory (same place always regenerates identically)
• research-grounded generation: stars follow the real stellar IMF and HR relations, planet habitability is gated by the Kopparapu habitable zone and star lifetime (so most worlds are barren), and living worlds grow Whittaker biomes with NPP-scaled, trophically-balanced food webs
• universe classification with granular signature metrics and an observer fleet
• 3D navigation boilerplate for future free-flight exploration
• cohesive glassmorphic, sci-fi HUD interface shared across every screen

Build

Worldline builds on Windows, Linux, and macOS. CI validates all three.

Linux dependencies

raylib is built from source and needs the usual desktop GL/X11 development headers. On Debian/Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install libasound2-dev libx11-dev libxrandr-dev libxi-dev \
  libgl1-mesa-dev libglu1-mesa-dev libxcursor-dev libxinerama-dev libxkbcommon-dev

macOS and Windows need no extra packages beyond CMake and a C++17 compiler.

Configure

cmake --preset default

Build

cmake --build build

Run

# Windows
.\build\worldline.exe
# Linux / macOS
./build/worldline

Tests

ctest --test-dir build --output-on-failure

The current automated coverage includes:

• seed determinism verification
• generated physics verification
• metaspec verification
• app-layer persistence and atlas query verification
• corrupt save-file recovery (malformed projects and settings)

Data location

Saved universes and settings live in a per-user application data directory (%APPDATA%\Worldline on Windows, ~/Library/Application Support/Worldline on macOS, $XDG_DATA_HOME/worldline or ~/.local/share/worldline on Linux). Set the WORLDLINE_DATA_DIR environment variable to override this with a portable or custom location.

Packaging

Create a distributable ZIP package with:

cmake --build build --target package

Project Layout

• src/app app shell, scene state, runtime ownership, persistence, copy
• src/physics law stepping and observable extraction
• src/seed deterministic generation pipeline
• src/ui desktop UI scenes and drawing primitives
• tests verification programs

Tooling

• .clang-format for consistent formatting
• CMakePresets.json for repeatable local configure flows
• GitHub Actions CI for Windows build-and-test validation

License

MIT