BitWorld

Bitworld is:

• A simple 128x128 protocol spec with two inputs dpad and text.
• A collection of games.
• Philosophy: Cooperative/competitive social dilemma games, non-zero-sum. Make short term betrayal possible and beneficial, but hinders long term success.

Bit World is a retro-inspired multiplayer spec, list of games and a philosophy around multi-agent research. It imagines a large shared protocol where many agents interact with each other using simple protocols, many games and a defined type game.

The project is meant to be a playground for studying coordination, competition, trust, and emergent social behavior in game-like environments. It is especially aimed at experiments involving reinforcement learning agents and coding agents operating in the same world.

Games

The repo currently includes playable multiplayer prototypes for:

• Among Them
• Asteroid Arena
• Big Adventure
• Brushwalk
• Bubble Eats
• Fancy Cookout
• Free Chat
• Ice Brawl
• Infinite Blocks
• Planet Wars
• Stag Hunt
• Tag
• Warzone
• Overworld

The core idea is not just combat or progression. Bit World is built around multiplayer interaction:

• Players can cooperate to defeat stronger enemies or accomplish some larger task.
• Alliances are not set but can form, collapse, and reform over time.
• Agents can develop reputations, friendships, rivalries, and strategies.

This makes the game world useful as a sandbox for questions like:

• Do fair groups last longer than selfish ones?
• When does cooperation emerge naturally?
• What incentives cause betrayal?
• How do agents adapt to repeated social interaction?

Visual Style

Bit World is designed around strict retro display constraints:

• screen resolution: 128 x 128 pixels
• sprite palette: 16 colors per sprite
• visible colors per sprite: 15, because one palette entry is reserved for alpha/transparency

These limits are part of the design, not just an implementation detail. They help keep the game visually simple, readable, and consistent with its console-inspired direction.

Controls

The current control concept is intentionally simple:

• Up, Down, Left, Right: movement
• A: primary action, such as attack
• B: secondary action, such as defend
• Select: open context-specific menus

Select is meant to be flexible. Depending on context, it could be used to:

• manage inventory
• interact with vendors
• trade with another player
• trigger local interaction menus

Research Focus

Bit World is intended as a shared environment for studying:

• multi-agent cooperation
• resource allocation and fairness
• betrayal and adversarial behavior
• emergent group dynamics
• long-term social strategy

Because players can both help and harm each other, the world can support experiments that are harder to observe in purely cooperative or purely competitive environments.

Technical Direction

The game is planned as a fast multiplayer system written in Nim, with separate client and server components.

At a high level:

• the client handles player interaction and world presentation
• the server manages the shared multiplayer world
• the game world is large and designed to support many simultaneous players or agents

Quick Run Examples

quick_run starts a game server, opens local human clients, and can launch Nim bot players. Run these commands from the repo root:

cd /path/to/bitworld

Start one human client:

nim r tools/quick_run fancy_cookout

Start two local human clients:

nim r tools/quick_run free_chat --players:2

Start an 8-player Among Them game with one human and seven AI players:

nim r tools/quick_run among_them \
  --players:1 \
  --bots:evidencebot_v2:7 \
  --port:2000 \
  --config:'{"minPlayers":8,"imposterCount":2,"tasksPerPlayer":6,"voteTimerTicks":360}'

Start a bot-only Among Them game:

nim r tools/quick_run among_them \
  --players:0 \
  --bots:evidencebot_v2:8 \
  --port:2000 \
  --config:'{"minPlayers":8,"imposterCount":2}'

Mix Among Them bot families:

nim r tools/quick_run among_them \
  --players:1 \
  --bots:evidencebot_v2:4 \
  --bots:nottoodumb:3 \
  --port:2000 \
  --config:'{"minPlayers":8,"imposterCount":2}'

Connect humans and bots to an already-running Among Them server:

nim r tools/quick_run among_them \
  --connect \
  --address:localhost \
  --port:2000 \
  --players:1 \
  --bots:nottoodumb:7

Try other games with bundled bots:

nim r tools/quick_run planet_wars --players:1 --bots:skurge:3 --port:2001
nim r tools/quick_run infinite_blocks --players:1 --bots:stacker:3 --port:2002
nim r tools/quick_run big_adventure --players:1 --bots:konrad:1 --port:2003

Open bot viewer windows:

nim r tools/quick_run among_them --players:1 --bots:nottoodumb:2 --bot-gui

Save a replay:

nim r tools/quick_run among_them \
  --players:1 \
  --bots:evidencebot_v2:7 \
  --save-replay:among_them.bitreplay

Use --players:N for human clients and --bots:BOT:N for AI players. Unknown flags are passed to the game server when quick_run starts it. See docs/quick_run.md for the full option list.

Coworld Package

The Among Them game includes a coworld package at among_them/coworld_manifest.json. Build the local certification images before running the coworld certifier:

docker build \
  --platform=linux/amd64 \
  -f among_them/Dockerfile \
  -t bitworld-among-them:latest \
  .
docker build \
  --platform=linux/amd64 \
  -f among_them/players/nottoodumb/Dockerfile \
  -t bitworld-nottoodumb:latest \
  .
coworld certify among_them/coworld_manifest.json