The VINE code has been developed by a group of people who have worked at several different institutions during the development of the code.
 
Authors
  1. • Markus Wetzstein (MPIA (Heidelberg), then USM (Munich), now Princeton)
  2. • Andy Nelson (MPIA (Heidelberg), then U Edinburgh & UKAFF, now LANL)
  3. • Thorsten Naab (MPIA (Heidelberg), then IoA (Cambridge), now USM (Munich))  
 
The project started out from an existing SPH code, contributed by Andy Nelson, based on a code inherited from Willy Benz, but modified from that version. At that time the authors were all at the MPIA, Heidelberg. Various additions to the code have been made, like N-body functionality, an individual time step scheme, a leapfrog integrator, support of GRAPE hardware, periodic boundaries, etc. During this process each of us moved to new institutions.
 
In its current form, the code has been a starting point for various additional developments, like an implementation of ionizing radiation in SPH, porting the SPH algorithm to FPGA hardware, subgrid models for star formation and stellar feedback, magnetic fields etc.
VINE’s modular structure makes it fairly easy to accommodate such new pieces as new modules into the existing code and we believe that the code is a good starting point for people who want to take an existing code and add some features which they are / have been developing.