gamedev-the-steward/docs/SIMULATION_STATE_SCHEMA.md

The Steward — Simulation State Schema

Current contract

SimulationStateRecord is the versioned JSON boundary for the current simulation. The current world schema is v11 and captures:

• simulation seed, tick interval, tick count, clock remainder, and elapsed clock ticks;
• every NPC's identity, needs, attributes, task lifecycle, target, position, starvation state, and decision RNG stream;
• village resource counters;
• controlled per-NPC wander RNG streams;
• scene-independent resource state plus the definition facts needed while its ResourceNode is unloaded;
• scene-independent animal identity, position, hunger, feeding history, reservation, availability, current routine site, active travel destination, and next routine tick;
• pantry contents, carried NPC inventory, the ordered economic event stream, and its next stable event ID;
• directed relationship records with familiarity, trust, and the stable event ID that last changed trust;
• per-NPC known-event records that reference objective event history without copying it, including first-acquisition method, acquisition tick, and historical communicator provenance;
• opportunity records with stable type/status, interested NPC, trigger event, target storage/resource/amount, exact later resolution event identity, or a deterministic invalidation reason and close tick.

The top-level identity is:

{
  "schema": "the_steward.simulation",
  "schema_version": 11
}

Unknown schema versions and structurally incomplete records are rejected. Add an explicit migration function before accepting a future version; never silently reinterpret old data as the newest layout.

NPC action and profession references are serialized as stable strings and restored as StringName. Records referencing unknown executable actions or professions are rejected against the validated definition registry. See the simulation definitions.

Deterministic continuation

RNG seeds and internal states are encoded as decimal strings. They are signed 64-bit values and cannot safely pass through every JSON number implementation without precision loss. Converting them to ordinary JSON numbers caused a restored simulation to retain the same visible state while silently changing its future random sequence.

tests/simulation_state_serialization_test.gd protects this contract by:

1. running a fixed-seed scenario for 48 ticks without interruption;
2. running the same scenario for 24 ticks;
3. serializing and restoring into a fresh manager;
4. running the remaining 24 ticks;
5. requiring the complete final-state checksums to match.

It also verifies clock remainder, resource amount/reservation/enabled round-tripping, presentation unload/rebind, directed relationship/cause round-tripping, divergent known-event state, communicated provenance, and deterministic retention boundaries, and rejection of unsupported schemas. Active, resolved, and invalidated opportunity round-tripping, contradictory target state, invalid resource sources, and cross-record event references are covered too.

NPCStateRecord v2 adds the resolved travel destination and whether it is active. Nested v1 NPC records migrate explicitly with no invented active destination. This allows a reloaded visual to resume travel without changing target selection or deterministic RNG state.

NPCStateRecord v3 adds carried inventory. SimulationStateRecord v2 adds StorageStateRecord entries; world-schema v1 migrates legacy village food and wood into the stable village_pantry and village_woodpile records. Parsed storage values are canonicalized so save/restore continuation retains byte-stable checksums.

SimulationStateRecord v3 adds ordered EconomicEventRecord entries and next_event_id. World schemas v1 and v2 migrate explicitly to an empty event stream. Event records use stable source/destination/item IDs, reject invalid or duplicate IDs, and preserve deterministic ordering across save/restore. See the economic event stream.

EconomicEventRecord v2 adds the authoritative world position captured when the fact is recorded. Nested v1 events migrate with a zero-vector fallback; old saves already encode their stable location IDs, and migrated knowledge is not recomputed spatially.

SimulationStateRecord v4 moves social authority into top-level directed RelationshipStateRecord entries. Each record contains observer_id, subject_id, familiarity, trust, and last_trust_cause_event_id (-1 when no event has changed trust). Parsing requires unique ordered pairs, existing NPC IDs, bounded relationship values, and a real event for every non-empty cause ID. The relationship system serializes records in stable observer/subject order so they participate in deterministic checksums.

World schema v3 migrates its NPC-local familiarity pairs into directed relationships with neutral trust. Nested NPC schema v4 removes that obsolete duplicate field; v3 NPC records remain accepted only through the explicit migration. World schemas v1–v2 also derive the graph from any legacy familiarity data (or initialize it empty) after their storage/event migrations.

SimulationStateRecord v5 adds top-level KnownEventStateRecord entries keyed by knower_id and event_id. The objective EconomicEventRecord remains the single completed fact; knowledge records only state which NPC knows it. Parsing requires unique NPC/event pairs and valid references to both an existing NPC and an event in the same record. A relationship's causal event must also be known by that relationship's observer and, for the current trust contract, be a food deposit performed by the relationship subject.

World schema v4 migrates relationship causes into known-event records. The old schema used village-wide awareness, so this preserves the implied known fact without falsely inventing spatial witness provenance.

SimulationStateRecord v6 / KnownEventStateRecord v2 adds immutable first-acquisition provenance: performed, witnessed, communicated, or legacy. Communicated records also retain the stable NPC ID of the direct speaker. New direct facts are created only at event-record time from the actor and nearby NPC positions; historical events are never re-evaluated against current positions. A co-located shared-activity encounter can add one communicated reference to the original fact without appending or replaying the event.

World schema v5 migrates actor-owned knowledge to performed; non-actor knowledge becomes legacy because v5 may contain either a proximity witness or an older implied relationship fact. Parsing never invents that missing provenance. At runtime, communication requires a distinct source who currently knows the event through performed or witnessed acquisition. Persisted records validate that direct-method snapshot even after the source forgets. This enforces the current one-hop boundary and makes validation independent of array ordering.

SimulationStateRecord v7 / KnownEventStateRecord v3 adds acquired_tick and a snapshot of the direct speaker's acquisition method. Direct facts use the objective event tick; newly communicated facts use the conversation tick. The speaker snapshot keeps historical provenance valid even if the speaker later forgets their own copy, while runtime communication still requires a currently known performed/witnessed fact and remains one-hop.

World schema v6 migrates direct acquisition to the objective event tick. Communicated and ambiguous legacy facts receive a fresh retention lease at the saved simulation tick because their exact acquisition time was not previously stored. The v6 source record supplies the persisted direct-method snapshot.

Importance is intentionally derived rather than duplicated: a fact is lasting while it is the current trust cause for one of that knower's directed relationships; every other fact is recent. Current causal facts are protected so relationship state remains explainable. Each NPC keeps at most three recent facts, and recent facts at least one simulated day old are removed at the next deterministic daily-sized review. The objective event stream is never pruned by this rule.

SimulationStateRecord v8 adds the top-level opportunities array and simulation.next_opportunity_id. The first nested OpportunityStateRecord schema stores opportunity_id, opportunity_type, status, created_tick, trigger_event_id, interested_npc_id, target_id, resource_id, target_amount, resolution_event_id, and resolved_tick. World schemas v1–v7 migrate explicitly to an empty opportunity list with next ID zero.

SimulationStateRecord v9 preserves world-v8 opportunity history and upgrades the nested record to OpportunityStateRecord v2. The nested schema adds closed_tick and invalidation_reason, accepts supply_missing_wood, and adds the stable invalidated status. Nested opportunity v1 records normalize their resolved tick into the close tick and remain valid pantry history. Economic event schema v3 adds normalized action_id and required_amount fields; nested v1/v2 events receive empty/zero defaults, while a new task_blocked event requires its stable action, source storage, resource, and positive requirement contract.

SimulationStateRecord v10 adds the top-level animals array and the first AnimalStateRecord schema. Each animal record stores its stable animal and species IDs, display name, authoritative world position, hunger, last_fed_tick, reservation owner, and enabled/player/NPC feeding flags. World schema v9 preserves opportunity history while migrating to an empty animal list.

SimulationStateRecord v11 preserves world-v10 animals and upgrades nested AnimalStateRecord v1 to v2. The nested schema adds routine_site_id, travel_target_site_id, exact travel_target_position, has_travel_target, and next_routine_tick. Migrated animals receive an idle, immediately due routine without inventing a destination; loaded-world selection establishes the first real target later.

Current-schema parsing requires unique animal IDs that do not collide with resource or storage IDs. An animal reservation must belong to an existing NPC whose active feed task targets that exact animal. Every animal_fed event must name the pantry as its source, an existing animal as its destination, food as its item, the exact feed action cost, and a valid NPC actor or the player sentinel. The latest matching feed event tick must agree with the animal's last_fed_tick.

The bounded opportunity family accepts at most one open record globally. Opportunity, trigger-event, and resolution-event IDs are unique and the next ID must remain above restored history. Referenced NPCs, storage, resources, and events must exist. A restock_empty_pantry trigger is a positive NPC food withdrawal from village_pantry to that actor's matching inventory; an open record additionally requires the pantry to remain below its one-food target and its interested NPC to have acquired that fact no later than creation. A supply_missing_wood trigger is the performer's known patrol or study task_blocked fact against village_woodpile with a one-wood requirement; an open record additionally requires a living interested performer and the woodpile below target.

Resolution references an exact later matching NPC inventory-to-storage deposit or player resource_extracted event from an existing player-usable matching resource into the target storage, with matching resolved and closed ticks. Resolved history does not require the storage still to contain the resource because later use is valid. Invalidation has no resolution event and requires a stable close tick and is currently valid only for supply_missing_wood. interested_died must agree with the restored NPC's death state; the runtime creates evidence_stale at the one-day unresolved boundary.

While a need is open, its interested villager's trigger evidence is treated as lasting during deterministic memory maintenance. Resolution or invalidation releases that fact back to the normal bounded-retention rules; neither deletes objective event or opportunity history.

OpportunityHelperResult and OpportunityPlayerResponseResult are deliberately absent from this schema. The helper result is re-derived from the open opportunity plus current NPC knowledge, directed relationship, inventory, action-definition, storage-capacity, and finite-resource records. The player result additionally requires no capable helper and derives its ordinary gather action, real destination, and source count from current enabled player-usable finite resources. Save/restore regressions require the same applicable route result and an unchanged checksum before and after querying.

When an idle derived helper chooses the reported supply action, only the existing NPC task, task-state, target, travel, and reservation fields serialize. The helper result remains absent: restore retains any in-progress ordinary task and independently re-derives current capability from restored facts.

Active-need communication adds no schema fields. It persists through the existing KnownEventStateRecord event, listener, source NPC, direct source method, and acquisition-tick fields. Communication and player-response HUD animations are transient and are cleared rather than replayed after restore.

Resource authority

SimulationManager owns ResourceStateRecord instances independently of the scene tree. Amount, reservation, enabled state, action/resource identity, yield, usage permissions, and discovery metadata remain available and serializable while no ResourceNode is loaded.

ResourceNode binds to a record by stable ID and provides presentation, interaction transforms, and active-world discoverability. Unloading a node does not delete its record. Loading another node with the same stable ID rebinds to the existing record and cannot overwrite its amount or reservation with scene defaults.

ResourceStateRecord v3 adds safety_risk, comfort_distance, and discovery_priority so unloaded resources keep the same target-selection meaning after save/restore. Nested v1 and v2 resource records are migrated explicitly. Current-schema parsing also canonicalizes numeric, boolean, and ID variants so a freshly registered finite source retains a byte-stable checksum after a JSON round trip.

Animal authority

AnimalCareSystem owns AnimalStateRecord instances independently of the scene tree and advances hunger and due routine selection in stable-ID order. AnimalNode binds a loaded presentation and interaction point to that authority; the simulation position and selected destination remain canonical while the node is loaded or absent.

Animals are not ResourceNode instances and are not inserted into the resource discovery grid. The first bounded slice uses a deterministic linear loaded-animal query. NPC and player feeding resolve through the same atomic care operation: reserve or select the exact animal, withdraw one real food from village_pantry, reduce that animal's hunger, and append one exact animal_fed fact. Failed withdrawal changes neither animal nor history.

The first routine consumer alternates Dunja between stable-ID shelter and pasture markers without drawing RNG. ActiveWorldAdapter supplies the loaded marker positions, the selected ID and exact position enter state, and AnimalNode follows a real NavigationServer3D path while reporting factual position changes. A mid-route save restores the same position and target; unloading the scene node pauses presentation only, and reloading it resumes from those facts. Hunger cancels travel before care targeting.

The persistent hungry/content presentation derives from authoritative hunger. The short feed response is transient and is reset rather than serialized or replayed after restore.

Local quicksave boundary

SaveSlotStore writes the existing versioned JSON record to user://saves/quicksave.json. It validates the serialized record before replacement, limits file size, restricts slot names, preserves the previous file during replacement, and can recover that backup if replacement is interrupted. Loading parses and validates the complete record before mutating the simulation.

In main.tscn, F5 saves and F9 loads this slot. Restoration rebuilds active NPC visuals from authoritative state.

Deliberately out of scope

This phase does not yet provide:

• a save-slot menu, metadata, thumbnails, autosaves, or multiple profiles;
• migrations from any historical world schema other than the explicitly supported v1–v10 layouts;
• player inventory or player relationship records;
• broader relationship dimensions, line-of-sight/hearing evidence, continuous or personalized memory decay, reinforcement, false beliefs, or multi-hop rumours;
• generalized opportunity/quest definitions, acceptance, rewards, assignment, dialogue, or player-facing quest-log state;
• persistence for the player transform or presentation-only scene state.

Those features should build on this boundary rather than inventing parallel serialization paths.