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FLESHNOTE / DOCS / ENTITIES / LOCATIONS & WEATHER

Hierarchical Locations & Weather Inheritance

ATMOSPHERIC ENGINE

Spatial hierarchy with cyclic loop protection and 5-level recursive cascading weather inheritance synchronized to active manuscript cursor positions.

The Self-Referencing Location Tree #

World locations are organized hierarchically using a self-referencing parent_location_id column in the locations table. This allows arbitrary nesting depth:

Spatial Hierarchy Example 
The Northern Reach (Continent / Region)
  └── Winterfell (City / Fortress)
        ├── The Godswood (Point of Interest)
        │     └── The Heart Tree (Micro-Location)
        └── The Great Hall (Interior Room)

Entity Manager Tree View & Cyclic Protection

In the Entity Manager -> Locations tab, authors can toggle between a standard grid and an interactive Tree View:

  • Drag & Drop Restructuring: Reorganize geographic hierarchies by dragging a child location onto a new parent.
  • Cyclic Loop Protection: The frontend prevents dragging a parent location into one of its own descendants, avoiding infinite recursive traversal loops.

5-Level Cascading Weather Inheritance #

Environmental conditions are authored in the location_weather_states table:

Column Type Description
location_id UUID / INT Target location foreign key.
world_time TEXT In-universe calendar date string for the weather observation.
weather TEXT e.g. Sunny, Heavy Blizzard, Ash Fall, Torrential Rain.
temperature TEXT e.g. Freezing, 22°C, Scorching.
moisture TEXT e.g. Dry, Dense Fog, Humid.

How Weather Cascades Down the Tree

To eliminate redundant data entry for every room or sub-location:

  1. When inspecting a location (e.g. The Godswood), the backend queries for a weather state matching the current Effective World Time.
  2. If no local state is declared, the algorithm climbs to the immediate parent location (Winterfell).
  3. The recursive search climbs up to 5 levels deep until a declared weather state is found.
  4. If inherited, the UI displays an Inherited from [Parent Name] badge. Local states take precedence and override parent weather immediately.

Cursor-Synchronized Atmospheric Context #

Atmospheric conditions in the Location Inspector are strictly synchronized with your typing cursor:

  • As you navigate across paragraphs, the IDE computes the active Effective World Time (respecting any paragraph-level Time Gutter overrides).
  • The Location Inspector re-evaluates the inheritance chain in real time, guaranteeing the writer always sees the exact environmental conditions at that narrative instant.
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