Tierra was the first thing that came to my mind, too. I'd already played with "Core War" [0] when I learned about Tierra. I so badly wanted to implement something like Tierra myself. I couldn't wrap my head around how I could identify the metes and bounds of a given "organism" to isolate it from the rest of the "soup".

At the time I learned about Tierra I didn't have a way to get at any of Ray's papers or code. Now I do, but I'd kinda forgotten about it. I really should revisit it. There's probably a lot of fun to be had there.

Aside: Steven Levy's "Artificial Life"[1] was where I learned about Tierra. That book, along with Levy's "Hackers"[2], and Gleick's "Chaos"[3] were formative books for young me.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_War

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Life-Frontier-Computers-Bi...

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Computer-Revolution-Steven-Le...

[3] https://www.amazon.com/Chaos-Making-Science-James-Gleick/dp/...

If you go back over 50 years, to 1971, you get Creeper and Reaper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creeper_and_Reaper

I can't believe this is the first time I'm seeing this video.

Genius. Thanks!

https://tomray.me/Video/Tierra.html

yes yes more people should know about Tierra, it's mind blowing.