Terrarium

A Dwarf-Fortress-inspired ecosystem simulator that plays music. Weather, water, flora, and fauna evolve on a 200-cell-wide world; a mod matrix turns 50 live ecosystem signals (water level, wind, stress, panic, swarm cohesion, "trickster mischief"…) into melody, expression, and MIDI CC — either through the built-in FluidSynth soundfont engine or by taking over any external synth/VST via MIDI.

Builds

Target	What it is
terrarium	Desktop app (SDL2): glyph renderer, menus, mod matrix editor, FluidSynth + ALSA MIDI out
terrarium-pico	200x200-pixel build for very low-power hardware (Raspberry Pi Zero): one pixel per world cell, no audio
terrarium-vat	CLAP / VST3 / LV2 plugin (MIDI generator): the sim runs inside your DAW and plays whatever you route it to

# deps (Debian/Ubuntu): cmake g++ libsdl2-dev
#   optional synth:  libfluidsynth-dev libpipewire-0.3-dev
#   optional MIDI:   libasound2-dev
#   optional plugin: git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/DISTRHO/DPF.git plugin/dpf

cmake -S . -B build -DTERRARIUM_USE_FLUIDSYNTH=ON
cmake --build build -j$(nproc)

./build/terrarium --windowed --synth --sf2 path/to/font.sf2   # standalone
./build/terrarium --midi                                      # MIDI-only (play external synths)
./build/terrarium-pico --scale 3                              # pixel build
# plugin artifacts: build/bin/terrarium-vat.{clap,vst3,lv2}

Keys: SPACE pause · . step · [ ] speed · r reseed · b biome morph · TAB menu pages · M/F1 hide UI · O MIDI out · K key · S scale · MODMAP page: arrows + +/- edit, E enable · F11 fullscreen · ESC quit.

Patches (mod matrix, chaos weights, voices, mixer, key/scale) autosave to ~/.config/terrarium/patch.txt and are shared by the standalone and the plugin. See CHANGES.md and docs/ for history and the 2026-07-15 audit.

archive/monoliths/ holds the project's single-file lineage (terrarium_0.1 → terrarium_remix_0.70.05), kept for reference; the modular src/ tree is canonical.

License & legal

Terrarium is released under the ISC License (see LICENSE).

Third-party components:

• DPF (DISTRHO Plugin Framework) — ISC license. Not vendored in this repository; the build fetches/expects a checkout at plugin/dpf. DPF provides its own independently written VST3 interface headers, so the Steinberg VST3 SDK is not used or required.
• CLAP headers — MIT license (via DPF).
• LV2 — ISC license (via DPF).
• SDL2 (zlib license), FluidSynth (LGPL-2.1), ALSA lib (LGPL-2.1), PipeWire (MIT) — used as dynamically linked system libraries; their licenses apply to those libraries, not to this code.

VST is a trademark of Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH, registered in Europe and other countries. Ableton and Live are trademarks of Ableton AG. Serum is a trademark of Xfer Records. This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them.

SoundFont files are not distributed with this repository; supply your own and check their individual licenses.