A Field Guide to Quine

Here we'll dive into each of the Quine traits, explaining the function of each one while showing statistics over the full set of 497 Quines. We'll also look at a few "unofficial" traits that we found ourselves using to describe outputs while working on the project.

Engine

Each Quine is assigned an engine, which is the algorithm that populates the colored cells. There are five engines, all which occur with roughly equal frequency. Each has its own look, and with a little practice it becomes easy to recognize them on sight.

Quinity

The most fundamental trait of a Quine is its "quinity"-- this is the number of generations (unique images) that each Quine can create before it loops around. A small number are "Perfect-Quines", which perfectly loop back on themselves and so only create a single generation. Rarer still are the "Pseudo-Quines", which generate an effectively infinite number of generations with no looping.

Code Liminality

The code can appear in a Quine in white text on the colored cells (Subliminal), or, more rarely, as black text on the empty cells (Liminal). The frequency of liminality varies quite a bit across the different engines, with the Lattice engine being the most likely to have Liminal code.

Space

A more subtle trait is the "space" in which the Quine resides. In Euclidean space, design elements connect via straight lines, while in Non-Euclidean space, elements connect via curves. The Glyph engine operates exclusively on curved space, so it isn't possible to have a Euclidean Quine with that engine. Non-Euclidean is overall more common, but an exception is the Shape engine, which is more likely to generate Euclidean Quines.

Chrome

Finally, there is the Chrome trait, which defines the set of colors that appear in the Quine. There are 20 of these, and each are named by the sequence of letters corresponding to the colors that appear in the Chrome: Blue, Cyan, K (black), Magenta, Orange, Red, Purple, Sky blue, Teal, and X (fluorescent orange).

Unofficial Traits

While the following traits don't appear in the Quine metadata, we still find them interesting characteristics that can be used to identify interesting or unusual Quines.

Symmetry. Each Quine has optional symmetry calculations as a part of its layout algorithm. If present, symmetry can be horizontal, vertical, complete (both horizontal and vertical), or rarely, diagonal.

Nude Quines. On rare occasions, a Liminal Quine generation will render with all the code in a single large text block. When this occurs, we affectionately refer to it as a "Nude Quine".

Perfect Sig. As each Quine consists of computer code, we end that code with a comment that is a kind of signature for the piece. It is of the form Quine NNN.M by Larva Labs, where NNN is the token ID and M is the generation number. When that signature happens to appear intact and on its own line, we have taken to calling it a "Perfect Sig".