We are six students at the University Of Applied Sciences in Hagenberg, Upper Austria. As a part of our studies we have to do a variety of projects. So in our 5th semester we decided to realize a project on artificial life.

Out of a simple idea we developed a concept which increased in complexity as time went on. Thus a rather big team of six people became necessary. In the beginning we had to merge our conceptions of a life simulation and after many scribbels and sketches we could really get started.

Since it was obvious that bitLife would be a very demanding task as far as computing power is concerned, C++ was the programming language of our choice. Furthermore we decided to use DirectX, because of its DirectDraw and DirectSound capabilities.

June 26, 2002
The organizational web site goes online. The real work starts.

July 12, 2002
Martin Wachtler joins the team as sound programmer.

July 16 - October 1, 2002
Summer holidays. Some ideas collected, first tries and experiments.

October 04, 2002
Daniel Kuales replaces Silke Guggenberger as designer.

October 09, 2002
Sketched relations between attributes (e.g. speed, life expectancy, mating cycle, etc.)

October 13, 2002
A first C programm calculates attributes according to certain body parts (head, torso, legs, eyes).

October 16, 2002
First graphical sketches of creatures, and plants, and the world.

October 20, 2002
The creation of a world with adjustable properties is possible. Defined programming conventions.

October 25, 2002
Screen design finished.

November 28, 2002
Plants sprawl our world. Visualization through a Java programm (until now all output was ASCII code!)

December 12, 2002
After intensive preparations the graphic programmers start coding. First iosmetric visualization of the world.

December 20, 2002
The creatures search and find targets (food and mating partners) and calculate a possible way to the goal.

January 07, 2003
First sound are implemented. The first survivable carnivore is populating the world. Animated menus are in the making.

January 11, 2003
Name system implemented.

January 14, 2003
Plant design finished. Mutaions are visually represented.

January 18, 2003
Design of body parts completed. Final Version (4th) of DNA system implemented.

January 21, 2003
Logo finished. The official homepage goes online.

January 26, 2003
BitLife is finished. Intensive testing.

January 28, 2003
Final release of bitLife at the ASP5 presentations at the University Of Applied Sciences Hagenberg. Screenshot

January 30, 2003
First patch.

March 27, 2003
Presentation at the security-forum of the "Hagenberger Kreis".

May 13, 2003
BitLife takes part at the digital sparks 03 - competition.

June 15, 2003
BitLife is nominated of the mtdgala, category "games".

June 25, 2003
BitLife won the mtd-award at the mtdgala, category "games".

August 03, 2003
An article about bitLife in the Rohrbacher Rundschau.