Game layers

Adventure Simulator alternates between an asynchronous strategic game and a real-time tactical game. The split exists to make realistic travel, recovery, trade, and social play practical without pretending the whole world is one continuous simulation.

Strategic layer

The strategic layer is the persistent world. Players create and manage characters, organize parties, travel between settlements, investigate quests, trade, rest, train, and manage inventory.

Time advances in explicit chunks when a party travels, rests, trains, works, or performs another strategic action. The interface is a server-rendered hypertext application rather than a freely traversable 3D overworld.

Tactical layer

Combat and other immediate physical challenges use a private real-time Bevy simulation for the participating party. The server owns gameplay state and the client owns input and presentation. Positions, enemies, damage exchanges, and other live simulation details disappear with the tactical session; only its validated strategic consequences survive.

Quest combat and strategic incidents currently use this handoff. Tactical stealth and hazardous-terrain scenes remain future extensions.

Client and model layers

The tactical client renders replicated state, sends input, and may begin animations immediately to disguise network latency. Client animation never changes the authoritative outcome.

Procedural model generation is a separate concern. Gameplay code should depend on stable physical and presentation inputs rather than a particular finished mesh or animation.

Shared rules

Strategic autoresolve, tactical play, content validation, and simulation tools share dependency-light Rust calculations for attributes, skills, equipment, combat, health, and other durable mechanics. Sharing a calculation does not move authority between layers.

For the current technical boundaries, persistence rules, transport, and trust model, see Architecture. For deployment topology and networking design, see Networking.