World Of Noumena | Update

This release focused on pushing the MUD toward a scalable, multi-node architecture while adding in-world tools for lore and puzzle interaction. Below is a technical walkthrough of the main changes and how they fit together.

Distributed Zone Architecture

Zones now shard across BEAM nodes using consistent hashing. The core changes:

• WorldOfNoumena.Cluster computes a hash ring and assigns zone ownership.
• WorldOfNoumena.Zone replaces the old global room-tracking GenServer; each zone process tracks occupants and broadcasts within its shard.
• WorldOfNoumena.ZoneManager starts/stops zone servers on each node as ownership changes.
• WorldOfNoumena.World is now a facade that routes enter/leave/say/emote/broadcast to the appropriate zone process.

Player Process Migration

Players are now separate from socket connections:

• The TCP connection process handles login and forwards input/output.
• The Player GenServer handles all commands, state, and room interactions.
• When moving across zone boundaries, the Player migrates to the owning node. The connection updates its tracked player_pid and continues streaming output.

This isolates socket lifecycles from game state and makes cross-node movement explicit.

NPC and World Event Sharding

NPCs and events now respect zone ownership:

• NPC.Manager starts default NPCs only for locally owned zones and reacts to node up/down.
• Admin spawn commands route to the zone owner for the target room.
• World events and room scripts are executed on nodes that own the relevant zone or are elected leader for global events.

Archive Terminals and Log Indexing

The Archives are now a first-class interface:

• Rooms tagged with :archive expose an archive command set.
• Archives.Log captures global and zone-scoped broadcasts for later retrieval.
• Players can search and read lore with archive search and archive read.
• Logs are accessible via archive logs, with zone-specific and global views.
• Optional external data can be loaded from JSON via ARCHIVE_EXTERNAL_PATH.

This gives the world a queryable memory without external tooling.

Puzzle Framework

Rooms tagged with :puzzle can host lattice-style symbol puzzles:

• WorldOfNoumena.Puzzles defines room-bound puzzles with symbols, prompts, and solutions.
• puzzle enter <sequence> checks the attempt and persists solved state in the player process.
• Successful solves can trigger emotes or unlock additional archive entries.

The puzzle system is lightweight but designed to grow into multi-step or data-driven puzzles.

Tooling and Operational Updates

To make distribution testable locally:

• docker-compose.yml brings up Postgres plus multiple BEAM nodes.
• Makefile adds cluster run targets (cluster-node1, cluster-node2, cluster-node3).
• TELNET_PORT and GATEWAY_PORT can be configured at runtime per node.

Code Quality and Maintenance

Several refactors landed to reduce complexity and Credo warnings:

• Flattened nested conditionals in player/admin flows.
• Refactored BFS pathfinding in Room for readability.
• Simplified storage transaction flow for character creation.
• Updated map/join patterns to use Enum.map_join/3 where appropriate.

Next Steps

Immediate follow-ups:

1. Persist puzzle progress per character instead of process memory.
2. Add richer archive ingestion (structured metadata, indexed search).
3. Expand puzzles into multi-room sequences with stateful progression.
4. Introduce zone-aware item persistence across nodes.