Inside Cardinal

Everything is just terrain until Scintillae start treating it like something more.

Environment

Persistent space inside Cardinal

MVP runs on a 1000×1000 grid in memory, roughly 10km². Nothing is handed in at spawn.

Post-MVP, Cardinal can scale toward a ~10km continent. Expansion stays gated by Scintilla population density and exploration. Cardinal doesn't grow until something pushes into it.

1000²
Grid cells
0
Starting knowledge
  • Forests
  • Rivers
  • Mountains
  • Plains
  • Caves
  • Coastlines
  • Dangerous zones

Environment fields

Time-dependent pressure

R(x, y, t)

Resource density

Regenerates slowly. Depletes under sustained use.

T(x, y, t)

Temperature

Varies by season. Cold stress, heat stress.

C(x, y)

Traversal cost

Static per terrain type.

H(x, y, t)

Hazard probability

Accumulates from events.

Seasonal cycle

They just notice food gets harder

1 real minute = 72 simulated days
20 real minutes = 1 simulated day
2 real days = 1 simulated year (4 seasons, 144 days)

Scintillae don't know what seasons are. They just notice that food gets harder to find, and it gets cold, and some of them don't survive it.

That's the point.

Entities

Discovered, not given

None of it is known at spawn. Knowledge dies with the carrier if untransmitted.

Small prey

Low risk. 0.4 hunger yield (stock 4–12 per herd). Respawns with random new stock.

Large prey

High risk. 1.2 hunger yield. Respawns every 20 sim days.

Apex

Lethal. Patrols a radius, attacks on proximity. Respawns every 40 sim days.

Flora

Berry bush, fruit tree, hardwood, reed. Seasonal availability. Some finite.

Water source

Infinite. Detectable from 8 cells. First Scintilla to find it has a survival edge.

Terrain objects

Cave (natural shelter), rock deposit (finite, never respawns). Scarcity drives migration.

Degenerate states in Cardinal

Failure modes worth tracking

Collapse

Resource collapse

Sustained overharvesting depletes a region permanently. Scintillae either migrate or die. This is not a bug.

Hazard

Dead zone formation

Areas permanently hazardous through event accumulation: fire spread, disease, territorial conflict residue.

Isolation

Isolation pocket

Geography that cuts off agent groups from the rest of Cardinal — potentially forcing independent development.

Scintillae