Temporal Determinism

Guaranteeing stable, reproducible evolution of world state.

Temporal Determinism ensures that the simulation produces identical results every time it is run under the same conditions.
This is essential for scientific modeling, educational scenarios, debugging, and emergent gameplay.

This page explains the conceptual model behind determinism in E.D.E.N.’s temporal architecture.

Purpose

The purpose of temporal determinism is to ensure that:

simulations are reproducible
outcomes depend purely on state and logic
no hidden randomness affects world evolution
scenarios behave identically across machines

This creates trust and predictability in the engine.

Core Principles

Order Stability — updates run in the same sequence every cycle.
Clock Isolation — multiple clocks never produce nondeterministic overlap.
Field Ownership Rules — only one subsystem writes to each field.
No Hidden Randomness — all stochastic processes (if present) use deterministic seeds.
Stateless Update Logic — updates depend only on previous world state.

System Model

Update Order

All clocks and subsystems update in a fixed, guaranteed order.

State Transition

Next state = deterministic function of previous state.

Isolation of Effects

Subsystems cannot modify each other’s internal data.

Deterministic Field Evaluation

Derived fields follow a defined, stable evaluation pipeline.

How It Interacts With Other Systems

Tick Engine enforces order.
Subsystems rely on deterministic reads/writes.
Fields represent full world state.
Application Layer uses determinism for scenarios.
Overlays provide legible snapshots of deterministic evolution.

What This Enables

scenario playback and rewind
educational repeatability
scientific reproducibility
stable debugging
consistent gameplay behavior
long-term emergent world simulation

Visual Examples (Optional)

deterministic timeline visualization
repeatable scenario demonstration

Public Extensibility Notes

Future SDK features may allow developer-created subsystems to:

declare deterministic constraints
expose deterministic scenario seeds
register reproducible stochastic models

Determinism is foundational and preserved across all extensions.