18. Modes
Redesigned 19 October; partly built Decisions Log §4; The Two Defaults – Implementation Notes (what is built); Generate §1.
18.1 The modes as decided
The default is a generated world that evolves naturally, which the user follows in real time and can pause to look into any part in detail. At the start the user chooses naturalistic or fantasy. Beside it is the Created world, explicitly Earth-like and instant. Variants sit on top of either.
| Mode | What it is | Sapient peoples | Built? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Generated: fantasy (pre-selected) | the world evolves naturally; the six races are added at the familiarity threshold (Earth-like within the last few million years: forests and grassland, flowers and fruit, birds, mammal-like grazers, warm-blooded predators; Evolution to Sapience – Outline §9.4); mobs and magic as set; native sapience held at tool use | the six races | no: the threshold’s checks and the insertion are not built; the arrival rule is (triggerOf, arrival.ts) |
| Generated: naturalistic | the world evolves naturally; no guidance, no promotion | only what evolves; often none | in part: the history to a mind is built (sci-fi without the guarantee) |
| Created | remade Earth-like in an instant; life created rather than evolved; then the peoples | the six races | yes (as generic-fantasy, the Creation), the six peoples arriving in four waves |
Variant (variant:eventide) | the variant’s races, languages and lore over one of the above | the variant’s | yes, over the Creation |
Promotion stays available as an option for a user who wants a guaranteed mind (promote), but no default uses it.
Still to build Following and pausing in real time
The generated modes are meant to be watched: the history runs, the user sees it unfold, pauses, and looks into any part in detail. The onStep and progress hooks exist. Still needed:
- an interface that shows the history as it runs;
- a way to pause, inspect and resume (a snapshot of the whole state);
- enough speed to watch: a history of life now takes 5–15 minutes per attempt.
Still to build The familiarity threshold and race insertion
The checks of the Outline §9.4 (air, temperature, climate bands, forests, grassland, flowers and fruit, familiar animals, large herbivores, warm-blooded predators, no recent mass extinction) and the insertion of the six races by their preferences into an evolved world are not built. Built: the rule for the moment (triggerOf): the races arrive when the world reaches the threshold or 750 million years after the primary radiation, whichever comes first, and the record says which triggered it and which checks had failed (Decisions Log §22); and the four waves, a fixed 1 000 years apart, the trigger starting the whole sequence (§27; see section 11.1, where the Created mode uses them). Decided: fantasy is pre-selected; before pressing Go the user may switch to naturalistic, the Created mode, a variant, or a setting of their own.
18.2 What is built today
The Creation (generic-fantasy in the code; the Created mode) | The naturalistic route (sci-fi in the code) | Variant (variant:eventide) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cosmos | any star and planets; a main world accepted if it can be remade: rocky, 0.4–2.5 Earth masses, not tidally locked (up to 30 systems tried) | physics only; up to 400 systems tried for a world with animal life | as the Creation |
| The world | remade Earth-like in an instant: Earth’s air, mean 288 K, liquid water, about 30 % land; its own plates and land | as it is | as the Creation |
| Life | created, not evolved: species fitted to each niche of a finished world, drawn from the trait tree | evolved to a mind: plain histories, then guided, then a last resort that promotes the lineage furthest up the chain | created |
| Peoples | Humans, Dwarves, Elves, Orcs, Trolls, Ogres, in four waves (the mobs Goblins, Fishmen, Giants and Dragons come with their wave and are not peoples) | the evolved species, one people in its cradle | the variant’s races, together |
| Magic | medium | none | medium |
| Lost civilisation and myth | emergent and ancient; divine frame | emergent; cultural frame | as the Creation |
| History ends | when the Humans reach iron, writing and the castle (at most 20 000 years; §28) | after the span; run again longer if no civilisation arose, else the next world | as the Creation |
A world in either is accepted only with at least 40 million km² of land and 25 million km² of mild, wet land.
18.3 Custom variants
Built (Variants and Races §2–3). A variant is a folder data/variants/<id>/ with a manifest, races, phonology and morphology presets, naming styles and an RPG profile. The defaults never read it. A variant’s races replace the defaults. Command lines take --variant NAME; generate takes --mode variant:<id>.
Eventide is the first variant: races (human, hynral, doari, tulkata, hadur, karaqa, with IE’s tables kept for checking), the five language presets, three morphology presets, the troll naming style, and the Eventide RPG profile and skills. That this is all data, with no change to the modules' code, is the test of the system, and test/variants.test.ts checks it. In generate, Eventide uses the Creation with its own races, and the first race (human) is the body the hand-off is judged against.